Game Title
Archeocook

Developer Name
Elise Trinh (Litotic)

Short Promo Blurb
The player follows the journey of Sy, an Archeocook who travels a river aboard their houseboat, the Mirepoix. Their quest is to find people who remember recipes from ancient times, and try to recreate cherished meals using the ingredients they can find.

Full Description
Genre: Narrative, single player game. For the purpose of the jam, it'll be a small interactive fiction/visual-novel.

Pitch: The player follows the journey of Sy, an Archeocook who travels a river aboard their houseboat, the Mirepoix. Their quest is to find people who remember recipes from ancient times, and try to recreate cherished meals using the ingredients they can find.

The current version focuses on a time when the Archeocook had to find shelter from a storm, which led them to discover an old recipe for a little cake.

Setting: The story takes place on Earth in a distant future. Interplanetary traveling is now a thing, but a handful of people have stayed on Earth. Some of them live along a vast river nestled in a tropical region. Their lives are paced by the abrupt changes of weather and seasons; but their ingenuity help them nurture the bountiful ecosystem they are part of.

Promo Image(s)
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1sLaHvRQF23-1yuE4EbTNC2gZwT_PXfSP?usp=sharing

Promo Video
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qy2ps8hIwFhy-BaMRjb_pRnCfL_CxnAC/view?usp=sharing

Artistic Statement / Use of Theme(s)
Changing the story means two things for me: First, changing the stories we tell ourselves about what the future can be. Too many contemporary sci-fi stories fall into some sort of a depressing binary -- you either have a post-apocalyptic world with people being violent and cruel out of survival; or you have a dystopian universe where mega-corps won. They echo a famous quote I heard once about how it's easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. They also are about either some sort of "wilderness" in the post-apocalypse case (with nature being all gone, and all that would be left would be scraps and a desert-like or wasteland-like environment); or a megalopolis with little to no nature at all.

My story wants to tell something different for so many reasons. We have countless examples of people actually helping each other in times of mass crises. (We wouldn't have survived a pandemic without these countless examples.) That opposition between "wilderness" and "cities" has also roots in colonialism, with (Western-like) cities seen as more "civilized" and advanced than rural areas. Lastly, the idea of an apocalypse is also strongly entrenched in a very specific view of the world -- what it usually means is how it's getting worst for Western, temperate areas. But so many parts of the world are living in an environment that would be deemed as post-apocalyptic, or apocalyptic, according to Western standards. Many people around the world are already dealing with extreme temperatures and losses. Yet they have not turned into some cruel or brutal people who are on the hunt to kill their neighbors. They are already finding solutions to survive on a day to day basis.

Changing the story is not only about how we are looking toward the future; it's also looking more closely at our present. (I'm just paraphrasing Ursula K. Le Guin.) Dreading an impending doom is both something that could be read as a privilege (because you were never aware of how lucky you were in the first place) and as a very simplified way of looking at the world (which could only be either heaven or hell, and nothing in between).

This game is intentionally mundane, focusing on common people. It is a very small homage to the many ordinary heroes out there who are already living along rivers on Earth, already trying to grow nature back where they can, and already having some comfort food when they feel down. That's mostly it.

Development Summary
The development journey went well overall -- I achieved what I wanted to achieve mostly, and learned a lot. I had to mainly change the way images would react to the text and choices because of a lack of time (I had a more sophisticated idea in mind about voxel tiles and such). I had to let it go at some point because it wasn't sustainable in terms of workload.

It confirmed to me that the more experienced you are in an area, the quicker you know when something is "good enough". While this game relies a lot on written text and choices, it really wasn't the part that took me the most time, because I am a senior writer. I knew how much time I would need to get to a point that would be "good enough", especially for the scope of this jam. It wasn't the case in other areas where I had less experience with (namely: Tinkering with Godot, and graphics.) It wasn't that I was slow at doing things -- I was so much more indecisive about how far I should go, and the kind of creative choices I had to make to avoid burning myself out.

I did work more than expected on this game, which taught me a precious lesson about knowing my limits and stopping sooner rather than later. Also, developing solo was both challenging and very rewarding -- at least whenever I made a decision, I could iterate quickly on it (like changing the music at the last minute, because I also changed the tone of the story's ending a bit). It was still a bit lonely at times, if I'm being honest, but I didn't have the time to be part of a cohort. I was glad to get some feedback along the way via the sprints.

Release Plan
I think I had a solid base world-building wise, and some interesting experiment regarding choices in an epistolary format. I definitely want to turn the hunt for ingredients and the cooking itself into a mini-game. I still need to experiment more as it will depend on the larger scope of the game -- if it would be more interesting to have something like Pentiment with very simple puzzles; or a game based on cards for the cooking part. I still need to experiment with it.

Oh and of course, the Archeocook will have more recipes to cook and possibly other areas of the river to explore.

I did do my best to have this version as self-contained as possible (hence a lot of information comes via text). In a future version, I hope to spread the story's lore at a different pace. (With more cooking involved along the way.)