This is the first of three posts about Food Coma’s gameplay. In this post we focus on the characters and their abilities. The second post dives into core gameplay mechanics and the third post focuses on keeping the game fun, fair and dynamic.
A Cast of Culinary Characters
From the start, we knew we were making a fast-paced elimination game with a simple premise: Eat too many calories and you’re in a food coma and out of the game. This mechanic and the game’s theme worked nicely together.
The question then became: Should everyone have a generic scorecard (essentially, you’re playing as yourself) – or should we add different characters?
There were pros and cons to each. A generic scorecard made the game simpler, but we immediately found that having characters added color to the game and allowed for more strategic gameplay.
We wanted characters to have something that differentiates them in a non-superficial way (not just different names and appearances), so we assigned each one an ability specific to the type of character they are. The character abilities added a whole new dimension to the game and proved to be really fun.
Here’s an early take on the characters. You can see we wrote some abilities in pencil after the fact.
Initially, each character had simple calorie bonuses or reductions.
But as the game evolved, we workshopped the characters and added more interesting abilities to achieve more dynamic gameplay.
Choosing a character is a strategic choice
Ultimately we decided to give up some of the simplicity of the game to make the theme more robust and allow for more strategy. Here are some examples:
The FoodieGram Model has a defensive ability that allows you to discard cards to reduce your calorie count and stave off a food coma. But you might be giving up big play opportunities to do so.
Whereas the Competitive Eater has an offensive move. You can voluntarily eat a meal – including your own – in exchange for more cards. This tradeoff can result in you making even more devastating meals throughout the game, but overuse the ability and you’ll be in hot water!
During play testing, we found the abilities brought the characters to life and have shown to make the game particularly exciting. They also worked nicely with the theme since we got to play off some great foodie characatures.
More than just a pretty face
But the characters were just the beginning! To learn how we created a game that doesn’t just look good but is fun and balanced, click here for the second post in this series about Food Coma’s core mechanics, including the addition of special cards.
If you like the thought and passion that went into creating Food Coma, support our Kickstarter which is coming soon and help bring this game to life. We’ve got some great stretch goal characters like the K9 and Robot chefs, so stay tuned!
