Ok, that might be a silly question. But seriously, do you like food? Do you like food in games?

Before reading on, my main question is this: Can I make a genuinely fun game about a cafe in which you make hundreds of different foods with skill leveling, magic (water/fire/earth/wind), an NPC party, adventure quests to find certain items (like...most quests), upgrades for your cafe, equipment, etc. that you would normally find in an RPG without including combat? I like food. I also like RPGs. Why not combine the two? Most have seen Cooking Mama, but what if it played like an RPG with the aforementioned features?

Recently I've been doing research on non-combat oriented RPGs and haven't really found many beyond the realm of simulation (Harvest Moon...more literally, the Sims series). A lot of people argue that a game cannot be an RPG without containing combat elements. From this viewpoint, RPGs without combat become adventure or simulation games. So I asked Google.

1. A role-playing game (RPG) is a game in which each participant assumes the role of a character, generally in a fantasy or science fiction setting, that can interact within the game's imaginary world.

Ok. Because the genre is derived from Dungeons and Dragons, it makes sense for people to believe that combat is a necessary ingredient (no pun intended). I thought so too for a long time, because every RPG game I've played has contained some form of combat. I asked thefreedictionary for another definition.

A game in which players assume the roles of characters and act out fantastical adventures, the outcomes of which are partially determined by chance, as by the roll of dice.

Now that sounds more like D&D to me. Dice rolls, chance, and fantastical adventures. Combat is something that many players choose to include, but is it necessary? What do you think?

In case you're wondering, there's game called Adventure Bar Story that has a similar concept. The difference is that you have to defeat monsters to get special ingredients to use in your recipes.

If you like some of the features of my food-based RPG, please tell me how I can improve them. If you like the idea, but didn't see any particularly interesting features in my list, please feel free to suggest new ones. Or, if you think this is a ridiculous concept, please tell me why.

After doing much reading, the conclusion most came to was this: if combat is taken out of an RPG, then something must replace it. What can I do to give the players the same feeling of leveling up jobs/classes and getting stronger in my game?

On Rye

How do you envision an "adventure quest to find certain items"? What sort of challenges will the player face?

One thought that comes to my mind might be that when the player is on a quest for some item there's a puzzle, obstacle, or task of some sort that requires you to bring certain pieces of equipment and NPCs with certain skills while managing money, time, and perhaps other resources.

Fetch quests in traditional RPGs can be a little tedious even with combat. Personally, I quickly get the sense that the developers are just looking for an excuse to send me to the opposite side of the world map to keep me busy.

I think about this a lot, actually. (I don't make games that have combat in them, at least not in the core game loop.)

One thing to note is that, according to what I've read (I wasn't around), the first edition of D&D was not so overwhelmingly combat-focused. I mean, there was a lot of combat, but experience was rewarded for a much greater range of actions. It was only when experience began to be restricted more for combat victories that the game shifted to be mostly about killing things for the rewards it brings. (I don't know how true this history is, but it brings up a true point nonetheless, that whatever you reward in a game inevitably becomes what your game is about.)

There's certainly nothing stopping you from using the idea of classes and skill improvement and checks and saves in the service of cooking rather than combat. That's also something that takes skill, that you get better at, and can randomly go wrong And it gives you reasons to travel around (to get rare ingredients, to learn from distant master chefs, to learn about new dishes).

• If you haven't played it, you should maybe play Star Ocean: The Second Story up until you're leveled up in cooking and can thoroughly explore the cooking minigame, which I barely remember a thing about except that it was popular.
• Definitely don't neglect Cook, Serve, Delicious!
• And have you played Recettear? While there's some optional dungeon crawling, the core of the game is running an item shop. You get experience from selling things to customers, which opens up more items and options, and behind the scenes are leveling up your customers' trust in you, so that they start relying on you for bigger purchases. That latter is definitely part of the core feel of the game, and drives home that the success of a small business depends on loyal repeat customers. You definitely want to replicate that feel, that feeling of expectation and relief when one of your loyal customers comes in; thinking "Oh, great, Louie's here; he always purchases expensive things no one else wants" or "Ugh, Prime again; she's so hard to satisfy" really makes you feel like a small business owner.
• It'd be worth playing a bunch of those "Run a small business" time-management games. (While "mom games" like that are sometimes looked down upon, their enormous popularity means that they must be scratching some itch.) I'd look at them not just to replicate whatever they're doing right, but to ask "Why aren't these RPGs? What are they missing?" I think a big part of it is that they don't offer me any choice regarding who I want to "be", so I never feel like I'm really playing that role.

First, it occurs to me that a food-based RPG should work, although I doubt that it would likely be as popular as a combat-based one of similar quality; whether this is a problem depends on your perspective and desires.

That said, I have an idea, if I may:

Essentially, this is a more-or-less direct translation of combat-focussed RPG gameplay into food-focussed gameplay.

As with most RPGs, we have a main quest, with a final objective; for this example I'll have it that the player character has a long-standing dream of catering to the king. (If you like, you can inject a slightly darker edge by having him want to assassinate the king by poisoning. ;))

As combat RPGs have adventurers of various classes, this game has cooks of various classes: sushi chefs, pizza-makers, dessertomancers, etc.

Where combat RPGs have enemies, this game has customers.

Where a combat RPG has the player killing enemies, this game has the player satisfying their customers by providing various courses. However, customers don't select their meals themselves: they are rather served according to the player's choices--although some customers are more satisfied by certain things than others, or dislike particular foodstuffs. Further, each chef is only one person, and can only prepare one dish at a time: if your dessertomancer is busy making tiramisu for one customer, they're unavailable to do anything when a dessert-loving critic comes in--unless you can stall said critic for long enough.

The better the player satisfies their customers, the more their fame spreads, and the better the class of clientele they attract--until, at last, they are invited to cater to the king's court (the "final battle").

Moreover, the better-satisfied the individual customer, the better they pay; this might be in simple money, but I rather like the idea that the setting has some strange bartering economy, and that clients give loot drops barter according to their level of satisfaction with their meal, and the type, level and specifics of the customer. Said barters may be directly useful (a new dessert spoon, or resources like meat or milk), or be used in bartering for useful items with storekeepers.

Similarly, as the player progresses, they can level up their chefs: perhaps the dessertomancer can learn an AOE "dessert cart" meal, or the meat-and-potatoes guy (who takes the role of tank, pushing out quick meals that don't satisfy much, but which are acceptable to almost all) might learn a taunt-like AOE "buffet" meal, while the sushi chef learns difficult, expensive but hugely satisfying special dishes. These upgrades may come from XP, or fame may do double-duty as a resource.

This system produces an analogue of tactical combat: the player has to decide what meals to serve where, and when, and how best to use their various meals. When a critic comes in, it might be worth sacrificing all other customers to focus all chefs on the critic--but what if your best chef is already tied up, or there are other prestigious clients about? When does one invest in dropping a dessert cart, which drains ingredients significantly? Given the resources that one tends to use, and which items the storekeepers take, which customers should be prioritised? Etc. etc.

I think you can keep a lot of the elements of RPG-style combat in any game that uses an RPG-style format. What if, instead of encountering monsters and fighting them by using weapons and magic while losing HP, the player encounters recipes and applies cooking techniques and ingredients while losing dish quality? The format could be essentially the same as, say Final Fantasy.

The key things for me would be to give enough background to make the cooking seem worthwhile and to have enough depth in the cooking system that I feel there interesting options for me to explore. Those are equally important in any other RPG I might play, so I definitely think that a cooking-themed RPG could work.

I remember an old anime called Fighting Foodons in the U.S. (Kakut? Ry?ri Densetsu Bisutoro Reshipi in Japan, which may or may not be an equally stupid sounding name) that was combat based, like Pokemon, but the monsters were food and you powered them up with recipes and special ingredients or something. It doesn't have to be fighting, but if the food could do something other than be eaten or sold that would open up your options a bit.

1. I cannot remember the game's name, but I'm almost positive some made something like this in the past few years. (I did not see the release or play.)

2. A food-based RPG can be done and even do well, but I'm guessing that it requires a creator who knows a lot about food.

Great discussion, everyone! I'm grateful for your good advice! I actually heard about Recettear literally a few days ago, and the gameplay videos I watched inspired me to write the original post. It's an amazing concept I never heard of before. Instead of being the adventurer buying gear, you're the one selling gear to the adventurers. That's when the questions hit me. Why aren't more people excited about this? Why am I just now hearing about this game? It's incredible (too much enthusiasm?).

How do you envision an "adventure quest to find certain items"? What sort of challenges will the player face?

One thought that comes to my mind might be that when the player is on a quest for some item there's a puzzle, obstacle, or task of some sort that requires you to bring certain pieces of equipment and NPCs with certain skills while managing money, time, and perhaps other resources.

I hadn't thought about that. I was initially in the minigame puzzle mindset, but I hadn't planned any particular implementation yet. I'll definitely try this.

First, it occurs to me that a food-based RPG should work, although I doubt that it would likely be as popular as a combat-based one of similar quality; whether this is a problem depends on your perspective and desires.

That said, I have an idea, if I may:

Essentially, this is a more-or-less direct translation of combat-focussed RPG gameplay into food-focussed gameplay.

As with most RPGs, we have a main quest, with a final objective; for this example I'll have it that the player character has a long-standing dream of catering to the king. (If you like, you can inject a slightly darker edge by having him want to assassinate the king by poisoning. ;))

As combat RPGs have adventurers of various classes, this game has cooks of various classes: sushi chefs, pizza-makers, dessertomancers, etc.

Where combat RPGs have enemies, this game has customers.

Where a combat RPG has the player killing enemies, this game has the player satisfying their customers by providing various courses. However, customers don't select their meals themselves: they are rather served according to the player's choices--although some customers are more satisfied by certain things than others, or dislike particular foodstuffs. Further, each chef is only one person, and can only prepare one dish at a time: if your dessertomancer is busy making tiramisu for one customer, they're unavailable to do anything when a dessert-loving critic comes in--unless you can stall said critic for long enough.

The better the player satisfies their customers, the more their fame spreads, and the better the class of clientele they attract--until, at last, they are invited to cater to the king's court (the "final battle").

Moreover, the better-satisfied the individual customer, the better they pay; this might be in simple money, but I rather like the idea that the setting has some strange bartering economy, and that clients give loot drops barter according to their level of satisfaction with their meal, and the type, level and specifics of the customer. Said barters may be directly useful (a new dessert spoon, or resources like meat or milk), or be used in bartering for useful items with storekeepers.

Similarly, as the player progresses, they can level up their chefs: perhaps the dessertomancer can learn an AOE "dessert cart" meal, or the meat-and-potatoes guy (who takes the role of tank, pushing out quick meals that don't satisfy much, but which are acceptable to almost all) might learn a taunt-like AOE "buffet" meal, while the sushi chef learns difficult, expensive but hugely satisfying special dishes. These upgrades may come from XP, or fame may do double-duty as a resource.

This system produces an analogue of tactical combat: the player has to decide what meals to serve where, and when, and how best to use their various meals. When a critic comes in, it might be worth sacrificing all other customers to focus all chefs on the critic--but what if your best chef is already tied up, or there are other prestigious clients about? When does one invest in dropping a dessert cart, which drains ingredients significantly? Given the resources that one tends to use, and which items the storekeepers take, which customers should be prioritised? Etc. etc.

I don't think it'll be a problem, as long is it looks and plays like a standard RPG. Thank you for taking the time to detail each comparison. I have a more lucid idea of what I want to do now. At first, I was thinking about having the player serve the customers--from taking orders, to monitoring wait times, to actually preparing the dishes, and then delivering them to the appropriate people--but now I have a different concept after reading your post.

The player is now the manager or owner of the restaurant, and can hire specific NPCs to do certain jobs (including the aforementioned jobs). These NPCs can then level up their abilities, gain experience from each completed dish (better quality = more EXP), and learn new skills. Instead of each character having specific special techniques, they can bring in special dishes and recipes as well as other skills.

I like the gameplay you suggest in the system implementation. It's a sort of strategy-role-playing-game with time manangement elements. I could also give it interactive Visual Novel elements too (not necessarily dating sim). For example, the player could try to convince NPCs who have special abilities to work at his or her restaurant through branching dialogue, quests, and more. Also, wouldn't it be cool if the player could actually have more interactivity with staff aside from just cooking? The player could choose NPCs to participate in recruitment or item quests, or some other form of gameplay to level up their friendship like Persona games (this is possible in Pokemon as well).

I was truly surprised when you suggested that the customers shouldn't select their own dishes, rather the player chooses something that he or she might like. I never thought about that, and actually, I think that makes for a more interesting gameplay experience. Perhaps I can mix the two. Since the restaurant is like a diner, the customers will be seated at a table and given a menu. While some customers may order a specific dish, indecisive or adventurous customers might say "Surprise me." That will definitely make the gameplay less repetitive. I also like the idea of loot drops, for sure. Satisfying a customer could be like winning a battle.

Thanks again!

It might be worth thinking about being explicit about the dice rolls that are happening, rather than hide it the way most videogame RPGs do. In a combat RPG we all kind of understand that behind the scenes there's some dice rolling, and when we fail it's because we rolled a bad outcome, but people won't necessarily expect that of a cooking game. Consider having the rules a little more explicit and the dice actually seen, so that people understand why their souffle succeeded or failed. (I don't know if this would be good or bad for the player experience, but it's worth a try.)

Things to play for research:

• If you haven't played it, you should maybe play Star Ocean: The Second Story up until you're leveled up in cooking and can thoroughly explore the cooking minigame, which I barely remember a thing about except that it was popular.
• Definitely don't neglect Cook, Serve, Delicious!
• And have you played Recettear? While there's some optional dungeon crawling, the core of the game is running an item shop. You get experience from selling things to customers, which opens up more items and options, and behind the scenes are leveling up your customers' trust in you, so that they start relying on you for bigger purchases. That latter is definitely part of the core feel of the game, and drives home that the success of a small business depends on loyal repeat customers. You definitely want to replicate that feel, that feeling of expectation and relief when one of your loyal customers comes in; thinking "Oh, great, Louie's here; he always purchases expensive things no one else wants" or "Ugh, Prime again; she's so hard to satisfy" really makes you feel like a small business owner.
• It'd be worth playing a bunch of those "Run a small business" time-management games. (While "mom games" like that are sometimes looked down upon, their enormous popularity means that they must be scratching some itch.) I'd look at them not just to replicate whatever they're doing right, but to ask "Why aren't these RPGs? What are they missing?" I think a big part of it is that they don't offer me any choice regarding who I want to "be", so I never feel like I'm really playing that role.

Really? I thought it was better to hide chance calculations and just display the outcome, but I suppose that isn't always the case. I'm accustomed to playing games like Pokemon, where your move could miss based on your accuracy or speed stat (or something like that, I wasn't necessarily a stat guru like my friends). I'll have to figure out how to do this in my RPG. Maybe there could be an option to display chance?

Thank you for the game list! I've actually watched gameplay videos of Star Ocean and Recettear due to my current inability to actually play them myself. I'll check out Cook, Serve, Delicious for sure. I've definitely played a lot of casual Flash time management games to see what the trends were.

Thanks again everyone! I've found all of the comments so far extremely helpful!

On Rye

Ideas:

Local organized crime wanting their 'protection money'

Health Department (a different kind of extortion), and government meddling in general.

Busybodies who want to tell you how to run your business (and their lawyers)

'Gone postal' employees

INS and your workforce

The Advertising game and THE business strategy

Gene altered foods (nightmare sequence)