Bon Appétit! Week 13 at AppetizeR has been all about tightening things up ahead of the Alumni Showcase. We made some significant structural changes to stabilize our connection system, added some visual flair to the soup results, and reworked our user experience flow to better onboard new players.
One of the bigger issues we tackled was making sure all players enter the game in the same state. To solve this, we introduced individual dialog sets that each player must click through before hitting a “Waiting for other players…” screen. It keeps everyone in sync without feeling forced, and gives players a clear signal that they’re in a holding pattern until the rest of the group is ready.
On the technical side, one of our programmers made a key change to how we handle shared space. Rather than trying to sync objects across a colocated environment, we moved everything to local spaces and mask that from the player entirely. It sounds like a workaround, but after countless troubled playtests and showcases, it turned out to be the right call. Players still react to each other naturally, the communal feel holds up, and our surveys back that up.
We also addressed a persistent depth perception issue that was causing players to place their soup objects too low on the table. After a quick conversation with our UI/UX designer, we added a small placement ring to help players gauge the correct spot. Simple fix, noticeable difference.
Our technical artist wrapped up win and lose particle effects, and the programmers got them rigged to each soup outcome. For the lose state, we wanted to avoid anything that felt punishing or off-putting, so we landed on a cartoonish skull and bones. For the win state, we leaned into the fantastical tone we’ve been building throughout the project and went with stars. We also had the particles interact with the base of the soup bowl as a boundary, which helps reinforce that blending of physical and digital space we’ve been going for.
Finally, our artists completed the last ingredient model of the semester. Crispy bacon is now in the game, slotted into one of our recipes, added to the chef UI, and implemented as a random spawn.