Blindfolded Chef

Hi! This is our third project, which we developed for the Games for Blind Gamers game jam.

 

In Blindfolded Chef, you play the role of a chef who works at Foodie’s Dream, a top-notch restaurant known for your internationally acclaimed dishes. Your secret: cooking while being blindfolded! Thus, since you won’t be able to see anything, you have to pay extra attention to the sounds of your kitchen and to the voice inside your head helping you out to remember all the recipes.

 

How to navigate through the menu:

As you load the game, press the spacebar and you’ll find yourself right in the menu, ready to start your cooking journey. Use Q and W to move and choose “new game” if it’s your first time or if you want to start your career from scratch, or “continue game” if you want to continue your ongoing culinary adventure. Press the spacebar again and log into your game straight away!

 

How to play the game:

There are thirty unique recipes that the player will need to complete to finish the game. 

You will be given instructions about the necessary ingredients, how to chop them, how much you have to cook them and what cookware to use. You can press the spacebar anytime to re-play the recipe recording.

In order to prepare a dish, use the tab key to switch between the list of ingredients, groups, and cooking methods.

You can use Q and W keys to move back and forward through the options of the list.

Ingredients 

You have seven ingredient lists sorted by category: one for spices, one for sauces and seasonings, one for meat and fish, one for vegetables, one for pasta and cereals, one for fruit, and one for dairy products and others. To change from one to another, you should use the key corresponding to the list number.

Groups 

Groups are the way to assemble ingredients. As you hear the recipe, you’ll notice that ingredients that undergo the same process (same amount of times chopped, same cooking method and same cooking time) are grouped together. Thus, sorting the ingredients you pick by groups will be enormously helpful to organize yourself and not mess the recipe up. You have up to three groups available for use. Keep in mind that you can move from ingredients to groups to cooking methods by pressing tab, and you can navigate through the lists using Q and W to switch between groups. 

• Adding ingredients to the group

Group 1 will be selected by default. Once you have selected the desired group, you can run through the ingredients again and press A anytime you want to add that ingredient to the group (press it one time for each time that you want to add that ingredient).

• Chopping ingredients

Pressing E will make the chef chop all the ingredients in the selected group one time. You can press E as many times as you want your group to be chopped.

Cooking methods 

Using the tab you can get to the cooking methods menu. These include: pan, cooking pot, oven, fryer, blender and griddle. Just like with the groups, you can navigate through the list with Q and W, and the last option you hear will be the one that remains selected. Then, you can press R to start cooking the selected group in the selected method, and press R once again to stop cooking. Minutes from our world are translated to seconds ingame. Therefore, if the recipe suggests you cook something for five minutes, you should cook it for five seconds. 

When you are cooking something, you will hear a timer that marks every second and makes a clear distinctive sound every five seconds. 

Getting the plate ready to serve 

Once you have finished cooking your group of ingredients, you can place them onto the final plate pressing S, which will empty the group slot. As you finish placing all the groups already cooked on the plate, you can press Enter to deliver it. Then, you will get some feedback telling you the customer’s opinion on your creation! 

Please, keep in mind that only the food that you place on the final plate will be judged. If you forget to add a group to the final plate before you deliver it, the group will not count as delivered and the recipe will be incomplete. 

Once you deliver your plate all groups will be cleared, so you will always start the following recipe with empty groups. Additionally, you can exit the game after you deliver a plate, since pressing “Enter” for delivery automatically saves it. 

Complete control guideline

• TAB to navigate through the different list categories
• Q and W to move back and forward through the lists
• Numbers 1 to 7 to access the different sub-menus contained within the category of ingredients
• A to add an ingredient to the group
• E to chop the ingredients of a group
• R to cook and to stop cooking a group
• S to place the content of a group on the final plate
• Enter to deliver the final plate 
• Spacebar to re-play the recording of the recipe
• ESC to return to the Menu screen
• Up/Down to adjust volume

Example recipe: 

A customer has ordered: Onion rings and tuna salad

• To make onion rings, first you have to chop two onions three times and cook it on the pan for five minutes. 
  • Group 1 is selected by default
  • Press number 4 to access the vegetables sub-category
  • Q and W through the ingredients list until you hear “onion” 
  • Press A two times to add two onions to your group
  • Press E three times to chop the onions three times
  • Tab to access the cooking methods menu and use Q and W to navigate and find the option for the pan 
  • Press R to cook and count five seconds. Use the sound of the timer to help you. Then, press R again to stop cooking. 
  • Press S to add the cooked onion rings to the final plate.

•  Then, you have to chop one tomato two times, and one tuna fish three times. 
  • Tab to access the group category and use Q and W to switch to group 2 
  • Press number 6 to access the fruit sub-category
  • Q and W through the ingredients list until  you hear “tomato” 
  • Press A once to add one tomato to your group
  • Press E two times to chop your tomato two times
  • You shouldn’t cook the tomato, so you just press S to add it to the final plate
  • After you empty group 2 you it is empty, so you can re-use it. You don’t need to change to group 3.
  • Press number 3 to access the meat and fish sub-category
  • Q and W through the ingredients list until you hear “tuna” 
  • Press A one time to add one item of tuna to your group
  • Press E three times to chop your tuna three times
  • You shouldn’t cook the tuna, so you just press S to add it to the final plate
  • After finishing chopping and cooking everything that is required for the recipe and placing it on the final plate, press Enter to deliver the dish to your customer.

Please be aware that after you trespass the threshold of the menu, there won’t be any graphic interface and you will be guided by your hearing. Since the game is mainly aimed at people with visual impairments, every word contained within has been dubbed and, thus, will be clearly enunciated.

 

We, Frog&Panda, are really concerned with the struggles with which people and even our own selves live every day. That’s why we always try to include a message in our projects and we have the goal to use our platform on itch.io to spread awareness on topics that we find of vital importance. When we first read about the Blind Games jam, we instantly knew that we had to join--we had to take the chance to do our bit in this regard. Mapping out an idea for a game that was specifically aimed at visually-impaired players was hard for us due to pure ignorance on the necessities and the status quo of the industry for games with the set of characteristics required to this end. We honestly didn’t know much about what’s been done for this set of players who also have the right to enjoy themselves through gaming. After doing some research, we found out that there aren’t many games strictly thought for visually-impaired people, so we thought about taking accessibility a step further and designing a game specifically for them. 

We want to spread awareness and love through this project. We think it might help those who are not visually-impaired to understand, at least for a few moments, how it feels to be so. At the same time, we want to let those who eventually are visually-impaired know that we embrace different and we embrace all players and game-makers no matter where they come from or what their circumstances are. 

As a disclaimer, we want to recognize that we are new to this kind of gaming, a non-visual gaming, but we tried our best to come out with a good product that is hopefully enjoyable by both visually and not visually-impaired players. We worked on the dubbing for accesibilty as hard as we could, but English is not our native language, and we apologize for any mistake that we might have made.

Spread love and inclusiveness, guys. We try to. 

Please, leave your review or rating. We dedicate hours of our life for the sake of our own necessity to create fun games with a message to the world. We appreciate all comments and constructive criticism. 

Thank you. 

Frog&Panda

P.S. Panda is kinda visually-impaired. So this topic is really sensitive to her. 

P.S.1 There is an upcoming hard mode which we are still developing. Sorry for the inconvenience! And stay tuned! 😀