Devil's Kitchen

Devil’s Kitchen — Putting the ‘H’ in ‘Treat’ is the first and thus far only published game I worked on in a team context, as well as the result of the first game jam I have ever joined — the IGDB Beginner’s Jam 2023!

It is a hectic shooting gallery game, where the player must tame the creations of their hellish restaurant by blasting them with the appropriate kind of sauce gun — mustard for the hot dogs, chocolate sauce for the soft-serve ice cream, and mayonnaise for the burgers! When sauced up, the food will be eaten by patrons, with the pink ‘angels’ preferring normal food, awarding more points. If not quickly subdued for consumption, the food will become demonically possessed! On its first lap on the conveyor belts serving the food, this will simply cause the dish to change its appearance as a warning to the player (and provide bonus points if consumed by the purple ‘devil’ customers), but on its second go-around, it’ll glow red and damage any patron it touches! Each patron has three lives, and the game ends when all lives are lost.

For a first-time group project, we collaborated well — I worked on the coding and design side of the game with my friend Orikamui, while the art was made by the wonderful Natemy. Our hard work paid off, as we ranked third overall out of 21 entries! It’s still a game I’m really rather proud of, especially given the amount of mechanical depth we were able to squeeze into the relatively simple concept and short development cycle.

You can play Devil’s Kitchen here.

Game Statistics

  • Release: 23-12-2023

  • Engine: Godot

  • Project Type: Collaborative

  • Commercial: No

  • Hosting Site: itch.io

Devil's Kitchen being played - the player controls a variety of sauce guns to shoot at demonically-possessed food items on a conveyor belt.

  • Learn to work within the constraints of a game jam and lean into the concept of limitations breeding creativity to make a game I would not otherwise have made

  • Assemble a team and deliver a fun, complete experience from scratch in a limited timeframe

  • Discover which aspects of game development I enjoy, versus which are perhaps better left to the competence of my teammates when possible

  • Lean into my strengths as a communicator to help facilitate group cohesion and coordination

  • Have fun entering a game jam with my friend!

Design Goals

Project Trivia

  • Unlike every other project I’ve released so far, I did make the music for this one! The game felt lacking without a soundtrack and we didn’t have a SFX/MX designer on the team, so I leaned into my hobby of making Irish folk music and pulled together a Bosca Ceoil rendition of the Rocky Road to Dublin.

  • This game is the first instance I can think of where a project I was involved in got the “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!” treatment. Due to the way weapon cooldowns worked, firing the mayo cannon, switching to another gun, and then switching back would let you shoot faster than shooting the mayo gun twice in a row. Switching to your sidearm and back is also faster than reloading, apparently.

  • Our artist unfortunately did not have the time to finish all the assets, so a few WIP sketches made it into the final product — most notably, the customers! The ‘sauced’ versions of the foodstuffs are also hasty devart versions made by yours truly. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t giggle a bit at my take on the demonic mayo-covered burger making it into the game. I promise I’m a mature adult when I need to be.