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The exercise: Design a simple PS2 game and control scheme in which you are supposed to eat a hamburger, fries, and a soda as fast as possible.
The game and control scheme should: Be intuitive and easy to learn, have depth to provide lasting replay value, mimic the action and feeling of eating, be easily accessible, targeted at a mass market audience, and be fun!
Please relate: The final gameplay and control scheme using the PS2 controller, your thought process and inspirations, why the game is accessible and will appeal to a mass market and why the game is fun and has replay value.
Thought Process & Inspirations
After reading the idea for this game, the first thing that came to mind was the recent GBA title Wario Ware Inc. because of its extremely simple gameplay, which mostly relies upon quick, accurately timed button presses. That game works well for the GBA, because it is easy to pick up and play for a minute or two. With the PS2 however, gamers are accustomed to longer sessions of play, so our game will have to be more involved than just a few timely taps of the X button.
A few years ago, a friend and I tossed around the idea of developing a unique control scheme, and then basing a game design around it. This burger eating idea seems like a great project to apply that technique to because it is a simple concept and should have simple gameplay, but enough depth to satisfy a console audience. By designing our game around the layout of the PS2 controller, we can create an intuitive control scheme that will mimic the action of eating and be fun.
Story & Setting
In the game, entitled Fast Food Junkie, you play the role of a young teenager with an insatiable appetite for fast food. Feeding off of the hearsay and conjecture of your high school buddies, you are willing to go to any lengths to impress the owner of a local burger joint in hopes that he will one day bestow the coveted “Lifetime-Supply-of-Hamburgers” award upon you.
Fast Food Junkie is essentially a series of mini-game like challenges where the player races to finish eating a hamburger, fries, and a soda under a various different time constraints. In some scenarios, the player competes against other opponents, ranging from heads-up challenges, to restaurant sponsored competitions against several other aspiring young eaters. Savvy players can even pick up new strategies by watching their opponents. At other times, the player competes against some other outside factor, for example, when she has to (behind the owner’s back) finish the hamburger, fries, and soda before her rival’s car arrives at the drive through window.
Control Scheme & Gameplay
The action is viewed from various fixed third person perspectives, facing the character, and the gameplay relies upon using the left and right analog joysticks, which control the left and right arms of the character. Either L1 or L2 is used to grasp with the left hand, while either R1 or R2 grasps with the right hand. The player must direct the arms down to the burger with the analog sticks, pick up the burger with the L and R buttons, and then bring it up to the character’s mouth. If one hand comes up more quickly than the other, the character will drop it, and lose precious seconds. When the mouth is reached, the character automatically takes a bite, and then the arms need to be lowered a bit, allowing for room to chew. Repeat until the burger is gone.
To eat the fries, the player needs to reach down and grab a fry, and then bring it up the mouth where it is consumed in one bite. As with the hamburger, if the player brings the food up to the character’s mouth too quickly, they will overshoot and end up with food in an unpleasant place (like her eye!). The character reacts adversely to this, which stalls the eating process until they can recover.
With the fries especially, there are a lot of different ways the player can try to optimize the eating process to achieve faster times. For example, the player can try using each arm independently (while bringing one fry up to the character’s mouth, reach down for the next fry with the other hand), or instead of leaving the box of fries on the counter (where it is liable to get knocked over) the player may choose to grab the box with one hand and bring it up closer to the mouth, so that the free hand doesn’t have to travel as far going between the mouth and the box.
Using the same control scheme, the player must grab a nearby straw and insert it into the soda. After bringing it up to the character’s mouth, the analog stick for the remaining arm changes functions and becomes the mechanism for drinking. As the stick is moved up and down, the character “drinks” the soda. The faster, the better.
The eating process is designed such that the urgency and tempo of the task increases as the player progresses through it. Eating the burger is slower and requires finesse, while eating the fries is more hurried and requires good tactics, and finally, gulping down the soda is a mad race to the finish. This ramping up of the pacing is especially apparent in scenarios where the character has to eat more than one series of burger, fries, and soda in a row.
Depth & Replay Value
To extend the value and depth of Fast Food Junkie, the player also has the option to play as different characters. The player may choose between any of the four main characters, each with his or her own advantages and disadvantages based on their skill level in each of the three player attributes (speed, coordination, and bite size). Each character has his or her own storyline with different challenges and scenarios along the way that reflect their personality and lifestyle. So basically, each of the 4 characters are striving towards the same goal simultaneously as the player controls one of them, crossing paths with and challenging the others along the way.
The replay value comes from playing through the game with each of the four different characters. Instead of the characters being balanced, there is a clear distinction in skill level between the four. By selecting a certain character, you are essentially selecting the difficulty level for the game. The “Easy” character has good speed and coordination, while, by contrast, the “Hard” character is low on speed and coordination. It takes a skilled player to overcome the poor coordination (this character for example drops the hamburger when you pull the analog sticks apart while bringing the burger to his mouth, and requires more precise movements overall) but he does have the added advantage of taking larger bites, and thus can compete with the faster kids in competitions. By finishing the game on a given difficulty level, the next character is unlocked to provide a harder challenge, and a different path through the overall storyline. The player who completes the game on the hardest difficulty level is appropriately awarded with various unlocked goodies and also gets to experience all four threads of the storyline.
Conclusion
Fast Food Junkie, although based on a very simple design concept, effectively expands that idea with an immersive control scheme, and diverse fast food eating scenarios driven by the individual character storylines. Players will enjoy playing through the game with all 4 characters, and the game rewards them with increasing levels of difficulty and unlockable goodies.
The fast food restaurant environment provides context for the design of eating “as fast as possible” and the control scheme is simple, yet does an excellent job of mimicking the movements involved in eating. Casual gamers especially will enjoy the accessibility of this game, and finding a license for the fast food chain would make it appeal to an even wider audience!
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