I am surprised to see how the designer use Bitsy to build this engaging game. Personally, I love cooking, and I know how to make this tomato scrambled egg dish. This game is taking the cooking experience to the next level. The designer organized the space in a way that is similar to a Chinese kitchen setup. For example, the stir-fried pot is in the center of the screen with the fan on top of it. In addition, there are seasoning bottles over the counters. There are also some contrasts in the setups. One thing I noticed is the color change for each scene. The colors get brighter after each scene, and the designer even made the last scene looks like the color of the tomato scrambled egg. There are no “visible” entrances/exits, they are embedded in the interactive elements. For instance, the player could process into the next scene when they finished preparing the main ingredients. Some of the objects have more attention than others. The interactive objects are definitely having more attention from the players, but I found the recipe object (the one as ? at the lower right corner) does not have as much attention I thought. For instance, maybe is because I know how to cook this dish so I know what is going on, but I didn’t use the recipe hint as often. I think it could be somewhat better if the recipe is shown at some point at the begging of the game to have the player have a general idea of what they are supposed to do.
I guessed one of the designer’s design goals is to create this interactive recipe. With this idea in mind, I believe the designer perfectly fulfilled this goal. Players need to follow certain orders on how/when to put ingredients together. This order helps the player to understand the correct way to cook this dish and the order matters in this case. Therefore, choices matter in this game. If the player didn’t follow the order and make their own decision, sometimes it could “ruin” the dish and result to start over the game.
Some moments I remember in the game were seasoning. I know some people like to make this dish salty while some want it to be sweet. I think it is interesting that the designer included this detail in the game. The player could choose one of them or do both salt and sugar. Personally, I usually use both in my dish in reality, so it makes me feel that I have some freedoms in the game experience. I was curious about how the visuals of this game are going to turn out. It is very appealing when the player mixes the egg and the tomato in that last scene. It looks realistic in my opinion.
Overall, I would recommend this game to my friends because it is a fun way to learn how to cook a dish, and also shows a different kind of perspective of cooking.