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[LiamBarden]

So i had this idea today about a hybrid game Ive decided to call 'Zombie Chef'.

The idea is that for whatever reason the zombie apocalypse happened last year, but it wasnt as terrible as most people would have expected. Quite a few people have made a living out of the zombies, including you, the Zombie Chef.

Youve just started a small restaurant in the middle of [LARGE CITY] where you serve an unusual range of dishes. The game would consist of 3 different sections:

1) Hunting Zombies
2) Butchering/Cooking zombies
3) Managing the restaurant (the main focus)

The hotel could work like those old 'Theme Hospital' type games (if youve ever played that) where you have to deal with whimsical and unusual problems in the restaurant - for example a zombie is stuck in your kitchen or one of the customers has started to turn. You would also have to deal with food critics as you try to achieve the coveted 5 star rating.

When out Hunting Zombies, there could be a small town where you have to search inside basements and sewers and such like. The town could even be procedurally generated. There could be rarer 'High grade' zombies with better meat or other special features that would encourage exploration. Also the more you damage a Zombie the less you can do with the corpse so you have to be crafty. Maybe you can also find supplies to repair your restaurant and build barricades on the outside and suchlike.

The cooking section could play like a more sandbox form of cooking mama. You could chop bits off the corpses you find and stick them in pies of something, i dunno. This section would be more like a minigame compared to the other 2.

My problem is, that such hybrid games are usually complete pissmunch. The opposing play styles tend to compete against each other rather that complementing, and it also tends to water down the gameplay considerably as you only have so many man hours.

Can anyone think of any ways the different gameplay areas could be made to work more smoothly together?
Also any ideas/suggestions for the game are more than welcome. I probably wont end up making it anyway but you never know.

[The Monster King]

whoa! eating zombies!! delicious carrion. i would go to that restaurant for i am the monster king.

theres two ways i can think of

one is to make the switch very dynamic and fast paced

by dynamic i mean like your character jumps from the zombie kill game into a foreground cooking game or something

and by fast paced i mean like wario ware basically


the other way would be to make everything basically the same game where you kill zombies with preparation and cooking methods and you serve them to customers
you could also bludgeon them with said meals or something

oh wait i re-read what you say and you'd want it to be separate!!

you could make cooking doable anywhere and maybe have like
two characters and when you have something ready to cook/cooked it gets delivered to the restaurant immediately by an NPC
so you can switch between restaurant/hunting anytime

but yeah the more each different gameplay section affects the others the cooler it is i think

[Sorano]

Neat concept.

Honestly, Zombies are a bit over done. Maybe consider different monsters to hunt? That could lead to more interesting dishes in the long run. Imagine: Chimaera Three Spice Blood pudding, Vampire Hot Wings, Frozen Strawberry Medusa Snakes or Cyclop Gaspacho. Lots of possibilities.

I really like the Hunting/Managing parts. They seem more fast paced and interesting. I'd consider diminishing the importance of Butchering/Cooking. Plus to translate such high-concept mechanics such as cooking, a lot of effort would have to be put into making it work effectively.

Hunting could be like an overhead adventure (think Zelda/Pokémon). Before going out, you would have to select specific weapons to counter effectively different types of targets, or like you said, the ingredient quality would suffer. Maybe just use large areas interconnected by a world map that slowly unlock itself. Players could eventually hire employees and send them out on missions.

Managing could be like an hybrid harvest moon/slower paced diner dash. There could be a day/night system that the player could decide. Your restaurant could be even specialized in breakfast, lunch or supper!

I need to stop wanting to write about it! Yeah, it's a cool concept worth developing.