A game about a simple task of moving food around, while keeping in mind several different mechanics at once. It's a hectic split-attention game like Diner Dash.
I prototyped this game in a week using Lua in Pico-8. I then made a polished version in three weeks using C# in Unity. This is an individual project.
Gameplay:
The player is the papa who needs to feed their kids five things each. The kids, however, don't stop eating, even after having their share. Meanwhile, the papa wants to eat one of every dish at the picnic. The player wins when everyone is fed, but they'll have to watch out for birds in the meantime.
Design Details:
As a base for a split-attention game, I split the win condition into two parts between the papa and the kids. These conditions are different but interrelated, so players have to keep both in mind at each moment.
I also designed the kids overeating habits and the bird poop to punish inattentiveness, which rushes players to make decisions quickly and focus on other areas of the picnic mat.
Pico-8 officially only supports keyboard input, so I incorporated these limitations into the design. Payers move a cursor across five stacks, only able to access what's at the top. This control scheme makes it difficult to unpack stacks and undo the rushed decisions of the past, putting more pressure on players to make good decisions.