This is the second of three posts about Food Coma’s gameplay decisions. Check out our first post about the game’s characters and if you want to skip ahead, here’s the third post explaining our solution to a key balance issue.
Keeping score
The way scoring in Food Coma works has been tweaked several times. We’ve always wanted scoring to be simple and intuitive.
Our first attempt was a scoring wheel:
The wheel was complicated and didn’t pan out, so we tried something a little more intuitive – a menu. It has now gone through several iterations as you can see below.
As a scoring device, the menu works well and fits neatly with the theme and feel of the game.
The menu shows the number of calories per meals, based on the difficulty in making that meal. It may seem simple but a lot of thought and balancing has gone into the values in the menu.
How simple became boring
Our first thought was to make things really simple by having all meals with the same number of cards be worth the same number of points. For example, all 2-card meals would be worth the same. So we tried that. And… it was really boring. It sucked the life out of the gameplay.
So we took another approach. Having varying numbers of different cards in the deck, and weighing them differently based on scarcity. For instance, since there are fewer protein cards in the game than any other ingredient type, meals with protein are worth the most calories.
It does take a couple seconds to look up your meal combinations in the menu, but what was lost in simplicity was gained in fun and strategy – it was totally worth it.
The store decks
When it’s your turn in Food Coma, you choose which store to “shop” (draw cards) from: the Grocery Store, Farmer’s Market or Butcher Shop.
There are five different ingredient cards found in varying quantities in the store decks and each has specific benefits:
Since some cards are worth more, we stacked the store decks differently to make each turn a strategic decision. Depending on your play style and what types of cards you need at any given time, you choose where to shop.
Since you draw fewer cards from the Farmer’s Market and Butcher Shop, cards from those stores give bonus calories, which are marked prominently on the ingredient cards.
The math is simple, but the calorie bonuses allow each turn to be a strategic decision, and calories can add up quickly for some devastating plays.
Let’s say you’re looking for a Protein card. You could go to the Grocery Store since you draw three cards from there. You could also shop at the Butcher Shop, except you only draw one card from there; however, the Butcher Shop gives you bonus calories on all cards, so it could be worth it. Every turn is a choice that has a real impact on the outcome of the game!
If you want to know the odds of drawing a particular card, see this table on the Instructions page.
This scoring mechanic, coupled with your character’s specific ability as described in a previous post, lets you choose different strategies based on your character and play style.
A dynamic addition
To continue our theme of keeping things interesting, we added some special cards to each of the store decks, called Star Fruit cards – since they all have star fruit icons. (We started with regular star icons but we couldn’t resist the Star Fruit pun!)
We’ve carefully crafted the Star Fruit cards to have abilities that are in line with the theme and strength of each deck:
The purpose of the Grocery Store is to help you quickly restock your hand of all ingredients, but the cards don’t offer any bonuses. So the Sale!! Starfruit card allows you to draw two more cards, and the Unidentified Food card is an ingredient wild card. Definitely helpful to get you back in the game but nothing overly powerful here.
The Farmer’s Market has Sugar, Flour and Vegetable cards. The Star Fruit cards found here offer defensive abilities like Diet Star Fruit cards, which block meals, and Leftovers which lets you reduce the impact of a meal. These cards are particularly helpful for avoiding eating meals. Remember, all Farmer’s Market cards have +100 calories.
When you shop at the Butcher Shop, you draw a single card and there are only Protein and Egg cards. However, not only do all cards have +200 bonus calories, but when you draw a Star Fruit card it can be devastating for everyone else! With Cheese cards you add bonus calories to any meal (including the 5-card Coma Burger). And the ultimate Mangia! Mangia! cards not only block meals but every other player eats that meal. The Butcher Shop has a combination of powerful offensive and defensive Star Fruit cards to make that single draw worth it if you get the right card.
With the addition of Star Fruit cards, we’ve also worked to make it possible to win by shopping in one store throughout the whole game. So if you really like shopping at the Grocery Store because you love drawing lots of cards each turn, for example, it’s totally viable to win by only shopping there. But shopping in different stores based on your situation may be the best way to go. The decision is yours!
The Coma Burger
It’s not easy to collect one card of each type (protein, egg, veggie, flour and sugar), but if you pull it off you can make the ultimate Coma Burger which not only has a devastating number of calories but is also unblockable. With the Coma Burger, we wanted to have a big goal that players could work towards, and reward players who achieve that goal. It’s not called the Coma Burger for nothing!
To make the Coma Burger even more epic, you have to say your ingredients out loud like this:
Going for a Coma Burger gives players a big incentive to save up cards and switch up the strategy when the situation calls for it.
As you can see, we layered on strategy like a finely crafted high calorie burger to make Food Coma a game with a pantry full of replayability.
Giving players staying power
Click here to read the final post in this series, explaining how we addressed a key problem: keeping players from getting picked on and eliminated too quickly without getting to play.
Food Coma currently has 35 unique ingredient cards, but we’ve got plans for up to 40 more! Help bring Food Coma to life by supporting our Kickstarter!
