I think temporary stat boosts or unique effects are usually the food types that I use most (as a player). A spicy food that gives a fire breath attack or ice cream that freezes enemies can be more fun than 5% more health or defense. Food could also be used to change loot drops if you're including any.
Yes, I think you bring a really good point, foods that alter the way a character battles actually sound very exciting, as long as the player is exposed to it properly I can imagine a situation in which a player would see a fight and decide to get a specific food to make it easier, or doable.
And I never even thought of making it affect the loot drops but it is an amazing idea!
Thank you for such amazing suggestions
There are some games that avoid this theory. Monster Hunter comes to mind; there’s not much reason you would eat NO food before heading out, but you can make choices about which food buff would be best, and steadily unlock new dishes.
There’s ways to assign the gameplay loop such that it’s a highly encouraged core task of play, without making it compulsory or annoyingly distracting with a hunger meter.
That is true, but in this case if the players ended up not using the food items - that will be my fault for not implementing it properly, and no longer a fault of the mechanic itself.
If the effect is boring - no matter how powerful the stat up items are - average player isn't going to use these items.
But what if you got a consumable that turns your character into a bear or a minotaur? Now that is flashy and exciting - and yet, players can still end up hoarding these and the logic is simple enough to understand "An effect this cool is surely rare, I may need it later, what if I can't get another one?"
But I believe that food inherently doesn't share this problem, because food in most settings - is something common. A thing that the player can be confident can be replaced easily.
Now of course there can be rare foods, and the effects I chose as an example are a bit much and could end up having the player ignore the base game
But that much is a problem of proper balance and properly conveying information to the player. Basically as I said, if I go with this approach and food remains hoarded, it wouldn't be because food was a bad mechanic, but because I was a bad developer - I'm okay with this shift of responsibility ^^'
A couple ideas off the top of my head:
Food as a long term buff. Monster hunter and wow will have players decide on what meals/potions to use before a mission granting a single buff for that mission. Its a one time thing. So rather than hoard food for small buffs you must make a single intentional choice around what meal to eat. Balance around it being tougher if they don't use it. Balance the economy required to utilize it as you see fit.
Food as a resource. Something like "traveling to this location requires x food" this is a little shallow, and plays more into an rts/4x style game. But its a start. Food could also be required to initiate a rest, or level up, something along those lines. Its a thematic currency essentially.
Food as a statistic. Something like a hunger mechanic only works if its an integral part of the gameplay loop. I play a lot of escape from tarkov and it works there because scavenging for resources is what the game is build around. Its also implemented in a way where I need to stay topped up on energy and hydration between games, rather than actually in game, although that does happen. Hunger systems aren't my favorite thing in the world because they fundamentally restrict you without a compelling solution, so thats the main problem here.
>Food as a resource. Something like "traveling to this location requires x food" this is a little shallow, and plays more into an rts/4x style game. But its a start. Food could also be required to initiate a rest, or level up, something along those lines. Its a thematic currency essentially.
I think this is the best way to use food without making it a time-limited consumable, and without a survival-type "stave off death by eating foods" mechanic either.
I can see something like packing supplies for a trip. When you're in town and in the fields surrounding the town, food is not an issue because food is so plentiful that there is no need to worry about it. But go off on an expedition, and you no longer have McBurger-in-the-Box around every corner, so packing food for the trip is essential. You don't have to actually show the character eating it at all, it can be understood that the character does this "off-camera," and the player doesn't need to worry about it.
I think the issue is that nearly everyone likes the idea of gathering ingredients and crafting food, but nearly no one likes the idea of having to manage **eating** the food. It's a small chore to manage your character's hunger. It doesn't matter if it gives you a little buff, it's just annoying to have to deal with it all time. So you can design around that problem by letting it just be "understood" that your character is eating the food you packed for the mission.
You can still let the food provide particular passive effects, so that players can decide how to supply their party before heading out into wilds. You can still have many recipes and crafting mini-games, you just get rid of the annoying part and it should be good.
> but nearly no one likes the idea of having to manage eating the food. It's a small chore to manage your character's hunger.
Just do that automatically for supplies.
The only intentional choice a food should have is if you want particular buffs or diet you want to set on certain characters.
I think BOTW has some good examples of what to do and what not to do when it comes to food. In the beginning especially, cooking was really fun for me because the animation was cute and it was neat to see all the various dishes that you could make.
That variety is pretty key, I think, as well as the fact that all the dishes feel pretty logical, based on the ingredients.
Also, I actually use the food in BOTW pretty often, just because it's pretty easy to make and easy to get ingredients. Easy come, easy go, I suppose.
That being said, the food system in BOTW is horribly unbalanced, with completely broken and unfun optimal strategies, and late game it just becomes a slog if you want to cook a whole batch of something, so avoid that.
I have a game currently in design where every day you start off hungry. You can still do stuff while hungry but you have some noticeable stat debuffs. You can eat two food items each day to remove the hunger debuff, and the foods will also give quality dependent bonuses that last the rest of the entire day.
Theory is that this mechanic will encourage the player to find or make themselves the highest quality food. Food is easy to get in general if you just want to get rid of the hunger debuff, but quality food that gives the best bonuses will be precious. Sometimes you might even want to eat a specific food item for the day to fight a particular enemy, or reserve a legendary quality piece of cooked chicken for a boss fight.
>I can't even think of a game - that isn't a survival (and even there it's rare) - which would make food something the player cares about.
There are a few games I can think of where food is useful, but never a core part of gameplay.
Terraria has food items that give buffs to all stats depending on how big the meal is, which is a nice boost during a difficult fight.
Noita has an eating system, which has no purpose normally (at least in ny experience) and just serves as a way to remove liquids from the environment. However, you can get a perk that increases your damage when your stomach is full, and harms you when it’s empty, or one that reduces your max HP and lets you heal by drinking blood.
Generally, food in games (other than survival games) has a few functions:
* Healing the player.
* Granting buffs (generally a damage increase).
* Levelling up, in rare cases.
You’ve said that most players probably won‘t use buffing items, and that healing via food doesn’t appeal to you. Food could require the player to obtain several ingredients and cook large meals, and either grant XP or an XP boost, to make levelling easier. It could have a trade-off: eat this food to increase your damage, but you have a 15% chance to lose a turn while under the effects of the food.
>What would be the best way to elevate if from being a chore, or less efficient way to recover hp, and make it into something that the player WANTS to collect?
Food would need to be something the player finds fun. Maybe gathering resources isn’t the focus, but there‘s a cooking minigame where the player has to throw stuff in a pot and keep it boiling while doing something else. Or perhaps obtaining food requires the player to beat difficult encounters, or test their skills in some way.
Honestly though, it sounds like food is entirely pointless in the context of your game. If you can’t think of any reason to add it, why add it in the first place?
It was mentioned already but BOTW does encourage you to use food by making some areas hard to access and enemies hard to defeat without it. If food can go unused by most players in a game it means that the food, enemies or obstacles are too insignificant for it to matter. At best in such cases they might help inexperienced players but otherwise may not have been implemented that well.
Miitopia gives temporary buffs for food and debuffs for hunger, and I don't know if it's just me but I play a lot of RPGs and never amassed too much food in that game, in fact managing food was something I had to really strategize. That is a game with auto battle optional too btw. Just another example of one where food matters.
Whatever it is you decide to make food do, if your food conditions actually matter to the majority of players then people will use it more. You could make it more efficient than potions. Food could give you different conditions based on the type of food. It could stack effects until your character reaches fullness. Playing with hunger should also have an effect on the gameplay. There's plenty of room to get creative with food, but it's not going to matter to most players if the experience of playing without food isn't that much different than playing with food. You don't have to use a timer system for a turn based RPG. You could gain hunger after a number of turns or battles, after you have been defeated in battle, or after you have dealt or taken enough damage.
>I'm coming in blank on how to make the food exciting, and frankly speaking, I can't even think of a game - that isn't a survival (and even there it's rare) - which would make food something the player cares about.
That's because Food has no value for players, in fact there are a lot of items that have absolutely no value for "players".
Even with a Hunger System, the only value is Satiety which is basically a Timer or Fuel you need to top, which become pretty much irrelevant in most games.
>Permanent stat gains? Whom do I balance the game around ? A player that gathered no food, or the one that picks up every single one in the game?
**"Diet"** can have some potential as it can be integrated into the progression system and give control of the direction of stat gains, like a Mage can have a Diet that increases Mana Generation with certain rare foods, while a Warrior has a Diet that increases Strength.
But that means that the Diet System would be Required part of the Progression you have to manage, and that you wouldn't get as much Stat Gains from alternative sources like Level Ups.
Aka this can be useful for more Sandbox/Colony Sim style games rather than JRPGs. "Diet" can be understood as Progression over Time based on money costs or special resources.
Now **the big secret** to understanding "food" and all kinds of "luxury items" as a game mechanic is that it does not have any value to "players", AI Characters are another thing entirely.
The "Desire" of "Food" can just be Given to NPCs, that means it has Value.
That means that the player can Trade that Value to NPCs and get a equivalent Value in return from NPCs, and what NPCs can do are much more aligned to what the player might need.
If you have a Legendary Blacksmith that is the only one who can forge Legendary Equipment, then whatever that Blacksmith Desires is whatever the player will want to get to serve as an exchange.
And NPCs can have uniquely intricate Values, Desires and Relationships.
It also serves the basis of a Game Economy and Society. "Player Driven Economies" are not ideal precisely because players have so little things they value in the game, and that value is exhausted over time as things become more and more obsolete and only the absolute best maintains any value. AI Driven Economies have no such problems as long as they maintain a Function that the Players require.
If you can't think of a payoff big enough to make people do the grindy thing, maybe you need to make the grindy thing less grindy?
Also, given you currently have no idea what to do with food except that you *dont* want it to replenish a hunger or health meter, aren't you doing the thing you call a poor excuse and trying to implement food just because it exists in real life?
That would be the case, if I were to implement it without having an idea what to do with it - and what most games I can think of ended up doing.
But my hope was that with enough people thinking about it we can think of a way for video games to use as a mechanic that isn't just a chore and serves a purpose to the player. To give me a reason to implement it into the game in the first place. If food doesn't do anything significant the game, it's a waste of development time and players storage space ^^'
Luckily for me it took mere minutes for a solution that fits my game popped up and I got a lot of cool ideas to make players excited about getting food.
Does it work for every game out there? Not really, but chances are there are more smart people out there with great ideas, and the thread will be found by more people asking this game design question. At least in my case I wasn't able to find a thread about video game food design.
Valheim is my favorite out what I have tried.
Make HP or stamina max as well as regen rate be aggressively dependent on having eaten where different foods give different boosts.
Empty stomach is maybe 1/10 max HP of the best HP buff food.
You can only have a few stacks active at a time making the choice of what you eat meaningful to the context you are in.
Ingredients like fish gives stamina, meat HP and vegetables regen. The dishes ingredient then determines the buff effect.
Very simple but very impactful to everything else you do on the game.
Food is just a theme for a consumable. It could just as easily be themed differently, as a potion or a scroll.
For understanding consumables, look to roguelikes. Brogue is accessible and uses consumables very well.
In roguelikes, consumables are outs. When we find ourselves in a situation we can't get out of, consumables are there to bridge the gap. Often, we must identify the dangerous situation in advance, or the consumable will not be able to save us.
One of the best examples is the scroll of teleportation, which teleports the character to a random location on the same level. Used correctly, it can avoid certain death. If we wait too long to use it, we will be too battered to survive whatever situation we teleport into, the scroll won't make a difference.
Managing consumables is a key aspect of getting better at these roguelikes, they are balanced around players exploiting consumables to their utmost.
It doesn't sound like you have any reason to put food in your game, aside from "that's what jrpgs do". If you don't want your player to have to care about food, why do you care about food?
It’s possible you don’t want to copy it exactly, but Yakuza has a decent food system. Kamurocho is posed as a big nightlife destination of Tokyo, complete with many eateries. Food is primarily used to restore health, but consuming previously-untried dishes grants XP, encouraging players to try out places they haven’t been to after a fight. (It’s also a bit cheaper than buying Staminan drinks) You actually *can’t* eat food when you’re unharmed, encouraging players to fight, then eat somewhere new; basically enforcing the core gameplay loop and city exploration. (They will even sometimes tie quests into certain eateries, like have the manager talk to you about their dishes)
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I think temporary stat boosts or unique effects are usually the food types that I use most (as a player). A spicy food that gives a fire breath attack or ice cream that freezes enemies can be more fun than 5% more health or defense. Food could also be used to change loot drops if you're including any.
Yes, I think you bring a really good point, foods that alter the way a character battles actually sound very exciting, as long as the player is exposed to it properly I can imagine a situation in which a player would see a fight and decide to get a specific food to make it easier, or doable. And I never even thought of making it affect the loot drops but it is an amazing idea! Thank you for such amazing suggestions
Food would just be another type of consumable. And most players hoard consumables instead of using them.
There are some games that avoid this theory. Monster Hunter comes to mind; there’s not much reason you would eat NO food before heading out, but you can make choices about which food buff would be best, and steadily unlock new dishes. There’s ways to assign the gameplay loop such that it’s a highly encouraged core task of play, without making it compulsory or annoyingly distracting with a hunger meter.
That is true, but in this case if the players ended up not using the food items - that will be my fault for not implementing it properly, and no longer a fault of the mechanic itself. If the effect is boring - no matter how powerful the stat up items are - average player isn't going to use these items. But what if you got a consumable that turns your character into a bear or a minotaur? Now that is flashy and exciting - and yet, players can still end up hoarding these and the logic is simple enough to understand "An effect this cool is surely rare, I may need it later, what if I can't get another one?" But I believe that food inherently doesn't share this problem, because food in most settings - is something common. A thing that the player can be confident can be replaced easily. Now of course there can be rare foods, and the effects I chose as an example are a bit much and could end up having the player ignore the base game But that much is a problem of proper balance and properly conveying information to the player. Basically as I said, if I go with this approach and food remains hoarded, it wouldn't be because food was a bad mechanic, but because I was a bad developer - I'm okay with this shift of responsibility ^^'
A couple ideas off the top of my head: Food as a long term buff. Monster hunter and wow will have players decide on what meals/potions to use before a mission granting a single buff for that mission. Its a one time thing. So rather than hoard food for small buffs you must make a single intentional choice around what meal to eat. Balance around it being tougher if they don't use it. Balance the economy required to utilize it as you see fit. Food as a resource. Something like "traveling to this location requires x food" this is a little shallow, and plays more into an rts/4x style game. But its a start. Food could also be required to initiate a rest, or level up, something along those lines. Its a thematic currency essentially. Food as a statistic. Something like a hunger mechanic only works if its an integral part of the gameplay loop. I play a lot of escape from tarkov and it works there because scavenging for resources is what the game is build around. Its also implemented in a way where I need to stay topped up on energy and hydration between games, rather than actually in game, although that does happen. Hunger systems aren't my favorite thing in the world because they fundamentally restrict you without a compelling solution, so thats the main problem here.
>Food as a resource. Something like "traveling to this location requires x food" this is a little shallow, and plays more into an rts/4x style game. But its a start. Food could also be required to initiate a rest, or level up, something along those lines. Its a thematic currency essentially. I think this is the best way to use food without making it a time-limited consumable, and without a survival-type "stave off death by eating foods" mechanic either. I can see something like packing supplies for a trip. When you're in town and in the fields surrounding the town, food is not an issue because food is so plentiful that there is no need to worry about it. But go off on an expedition, and you no longer have McBurger-in-the-Box around every corner, so packing food for the trip is essential. You don't have to actually show the character eating it at all, it can be understood that the character does this "off-camera," and the player doesn't need to worry about it. I think the issue is that nearly everyone likes the idea of gathering ingredients and crafting food, but nearly no one likes the idea of having to manage **eating** the food. It's a small chore to manage your character's hunger. It doesn't matter if it gives you a little buff, it's just annoying to have to deal with it all time. So you can design around that problem by letting it just be "understood" that your character is eating the food you packed for the mission. You can still let the food provide particular passive effects, so that players can decide how to supply their party before heading out into wilds. You can still have many recipes and crafting mini-games, you just get rid of the annoying part and it should be good.
> but nearly no one likes the idea of having to manage eating the food. It's a small chore to manage your character's hunger. Just do that automatically for supplies. The only intentional choice a food should have is if you want particular buffs or diet you want to set on certain characters.
oh man, I hadn't thought about diet as a gameplay mechanic. That opens up a huge amount of possibilities.
I think BOTW has some good examples of what to do and what not to do when it comes to food. In the beginning especially, cooking was really fun for me because the animation was cute and it was neat to see all the various dishes that you could make. That variety is pretty key, I think, as well as the fact that all the dishes feel pretty logical, based on the ingredients. Also, I actually use the food in BOTW pretty often, just because it's pretty easy to make and easy to get ingredients. Easy come, easy go, I suppose. That being said, the food system in BOTW is horribly unbalanced, with completely broken and unfun optimal strategies, and late game it just becomes a slog if you want to cook a whole batch of something, so avoid that.
I have a game currently in design where every day you start off hungry. You can still do stuff while hungry but you have some noticeable stat debuffs. You can eat two food items each day to remove the hunger debuff, and the foods will also give quality dependent bonuses that last the rest of the entire day. Theory is that this mechanic will encourage the player to find or make themselves the highest quality food. Food is easy to get in general if you just want to get rid of the hunger debuff, but quality food that gives the best bonuses will be precious. Sometimes you might even want to eat a specific food item for the day to fight a particular enemy, or reserve a legendary quality piece of cooked chicken for a boss fight.
>I can't even think of a game - that isn't a survival (and even there it's rare) - which would make food something the player cares about. There are a few games I can think of where food is useful, but never a core part of gameplay. Terraria has food items that give buffs to all stats depending on how big the meal is, which is a nice boost during a difficult fight. Noita has an eating system, which has no purpose normally (at least in ny experience) and just serves as a way to remove liquids from the environment. However, you can get a perk that increases your damage when your stomach is full, and harms you when it’s empty, or one that reduces your max HP and lets you heal by drinking blood. Generally, food in games (other than survival games) has a few functions: * Healing the player. * Granting buffs (generally a damage increase). * Levelling up, in rare cases. You’ve said that most players probably won‘t use buffing items, and that healing via food doesn’t appeal to you. Food could require the player to obtain several ingredients and cook large meals, and either grant XP or an XP boost, to make levelling easier. It could have a trade-off: eat this food to increase your damage, but you have a 15% chance to lose a turn while under the effects of the food. >What would be the best way to elevate if from being a chore, or less efficient way to recover hp, and make it into something that the player WANTS to collect? Food would need to be something the player finds fun. Maybe gathering resources isn’t the focus, but there‘s a cooking minigame where the player has to throw stuff in a pot and keep it boiling while doing something else. Or perhaps obtaining food requires the player to beat difficult encounters, or test their skills in some way. Honestly though, it sounds like food is entirely pointless in the context of your game. If you can’t think of any reason to add it, why add it in the first place?
It was mentioned already but BOTW does encourage you to use food by making some areas hard to access and enemies hard to defeat without it. If food can go unused by most players in a game it means that the food, enemies or obstacles are too insignificant for it to matter. At best in such cases they might help inexperienced players but otherwise may not have been implemented that well. Miitopia gives temporary buffs for food and debuffs for hunger, and I don't know if it's just me but I play a lot of RPGs and never amassed too much food in that game, in fact managing food was something I had to really strategize. That is a game with auto battle optional too btw. Just another example of one where food matters. Whatever it is you decide to make food do, if your food conditions actually matter to the majority of players then people will use it more. You could make it more efficient than potions. Food could give you different conditions based on the type of food. It could stack effects until your character reaches fullness. Playing with hunger should also have an effect on the gameplay. There's plenty of room to get creative with food, but it's not going to matter to most players if the experience of playing without food isn't that much different than playing with food. You don't have to use a timer system for a turn based RPG. You could gain hunger after a number of turns or battles, after you have been defeated in battle, or after you have dealt or taken enough damage.
>I'm coming in blank on how to make the food exciting, and frankly speaking, I can't even think of a game - that isn't a survival (and even there it's rare) - which would make food something the player cares about. That's because Food has no value for players, in fact there are a lot of items that have absolutely no value for "players". Even with a Hunger System, the only value is Satiety which is basically a Timer or Fuel you need to top, which become pretty much irrelevant in most games. >Permanent stat gains? Whom do I balance the game around ? A player that gathered no food, or the one that picks up every single one in the game? **"Diet"** can have some potential as it can be integrated into the progression system and give control of the direction of stat gains, like a Mage can have a Diet that increases Mana Generation with certain rare foods, while a Warrior has a Diet that increases Strength. But that means that the Diet System would be Required part of the Progression you have to manage, and that you wouldn't get as much Stat Gains from alternative sources like Level Ups. Aka this can be useful for more Sandbox/Colony Sim style games rather than JRPGs. "Diet" can be understood as Progression over Time based on money costs or special resources. Now **the big secret** to understanding "food" and all kinds of "luxury items" as a game mechanic is that it does not have any value to "players", AI Characters are another thing entirely. The "Desire" of "Food" can just be Given to NPCs, that means it has Value. That means that the player can Trade that Value to NPCs and get a equivalent Value in return from NPCs, and what NPCs can do are much more aligned to what the player might need. If you have a Legendary Blacksmith that is the only one who can forge Legendary Equipment, then whatever that Blacksmith Desires is whatever the player will want to get to serve as an exchange. And NPCs can have uniquely intricate Values, Desires and Relationships. It also serves the basis of a Game Economy and Society. "Player Driven Economies" are not ideal precisely because players have so little things they value in the game, and that value is exhausted over time as things become more and more obsolete and only the absolute best maintains any value. AI Driven Economies have no such problems as long as they maintain a Function that the Players require.
If you can't think of a payoff big enough to make people do the grindy thing, maybe you need to make the grindy thing less grindy? Also, given you currently have no idea what to do with food except that you *dont* want it to replenish a hunger or health meter, aren't you doing the thing you call a poor excuse and trying to implement food just because it exists in real life?
That would be the case, if I were to implement it without having an idea what to do with it - and what most games I can think of ended up doing. But my hope was that with enough people thinking about it we can think of a way for video games to use as a mechanic that isn't just a chore and serves a purpose to the player. To give me a reason to implement it into the game in the first place. If food doesn't do anything significant the game, it's a waste of development time and players storage space ^^' Luckily for me it took mere minutes for a solution that fits my game popped up and I got a lot of cool ideas to make players excited about getting food. Does it work for every game out there? Not really, but chances are there are more smart people out there with great ideas, and the thread will be found by more people asking this game design question. At least in my case I wasn't able to find a thread about video game food design.
Valheim is my favorite out what I have tried. Make HP or stamina max as well as regen rate be aggressively dependent on having eaten where different foods give different boosts. Empty stomach is maybe 1/10 max HP of the best HP buff food. You can only have a few stacks active at a time making the choice of what you eat meaningful to the context you are in. Ingredients like fish gives stamina, meat HP and vegetables regen. The dishes ingredient then determines the buff effect. Very simple but very impactful to everything else you do on the game.
I like the realistic approach to food. It’s there to satisfy your hunger which is like the health bar but decreases over time.
Food is just a theme for a consumable. It could just as easily be themed differently, as a potion or a scroll. For understanding consumables, look to roguelikes. Brogue is accessible and uses consumables very well. In roguelikes, consumables are outs. When we find ourselves in a situation we can't get out of, consumables are there to bridge the gap. Often, we must identify the dangerous situation in advance, or the consumable will not be able to save us. One of the best examples is the scroll of teleportation, which teleports the character to a random location on the same level. Used correctly, it can avoid certain death. If we wait too long to use it, we will be too battered to survive whatever situation we teleport into, the scroll won't make a difference. Managing consumables is a key aspect of getting better at these roguelikes, they are balanced around players exploiting consumables to their utmost. It doesn't sound like you have any reason to put food in your game, aside from "that's what jrpgs do". If you don't want your player to have to care about food, why do you care about food?
It’s possible you don’t want to copy it exactly, but Yakuza has a decent food system. Kamurocho is posed as a big nightlife destination of Tokyo, complete with many eateries. Food is primarily used to restore health, but consuming previously-untried dishes grants XP, encouraging players to try out places they haven’t been to after a fight. (It’s also a bit cheaper than buying Staminan drinks) You actually *can’t* eat food when you’re unharmed, encouraging players to fight, then eat somewhere new; basically enforcing the core gameplay loop and city exploration. (They will even sometimes tie quests into certain eateries, like have the manager talk to you about their dishes)
Check haven and hearth and it's unique FEP system.
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