Thank you! I think it is a good sign that there are suspicions. It means that my sleeping 4-5 hours wasn’t for nothing. Overall, it really helped me that I worked in a style that is very simple for me, and I had used similar mechanics in a previous game. I was able to reuse various things like leaderboards, settings, dialogues, descriptions, and many animations from old games. And yes, the ‘limitation’ is done terribly, I agree 100%. Initially, I wanted to leave only the timer and make it is so that food gives a time bonus, then the theme would have fit.
But, I cut all that out. Why? Because such a limitation simply killed the core of item exploration; it is would have been impossible to read if there was a strict time limit. And if I had made a pause during cooking, it is would have been weird again, like there is a timer, but it is not really there. There would have been a problem with endless looting. I agree that limitations should be adhered to, but I just messed up at the beginning of development and didn’t think through the cycle at the start.
Also, I ended up with poor balance. There are things that are hard to find in combination, but they give a MINUS to points, which is just ridiculous. I left it is for the last couple of hours before submission, even though it is should have been done much earlier