Secret Munchies

Design devlog #1

Topic

As you may or may not know, there are several fast food chains in the middle of the US Pentagon office building which is also known as the headquarters of the department of defense.

Now picture this: You are a secret spy from a non-disclosed country and your main objective is to work in disguise as an employee of a fictional chain called Munchies while relaying obtained confidential information back to your supervisors.

While “working” you are trying to overhear crucial information and when you do - it’s showtime. Using a trusty old telegraph machine, you then send out morse code secret messages, just like the one which the kids deciphered in Stranger Things.

Main inspiration:
Papers, Please, Do Not Feed the Monkeys and Job Simulator.

Visual

I will mainly use low-poly retro ps1 style assets, mainly because it’s easier to create myself or find these online. Since this game will also be on Android, I want to limit the camera angles to be fixed per station with 3D movement transitions between them. Now that I have made these mocup images for the devlog, I’m starting to think I might make the whole game black and white :D Maybe even have the NPC’s as 2D sketched planes, that are rigged and can be animated (sort of like South Park characters), but they will still walk around in 3D. So everything will have a black and white toon shader and “look 2D”, but will be actually 3D.

Main game loop

Each in-game “shift” plays out across three main stations:

1. Order Station – The Cover Job

Customers arrive with unique dialogue snippets. Sometimes it’s just an order, sometimes they drop a hint at something confidential. The computer also has a secret notepad where you write these down, while simultaneously creating their food order.

You must act natural - taking too long or making mistakes raises suspicion. (Timer per customer)
You can also overhear someone else in the queue or just walking by, talking about super secret stuff.

2. Packing Station – The Busywork

Assemble food orders by clicking on the correct items (burger, fries, drink, etc) and their corresponding bag with the right order number. There is also a timer for each order so they don’t take too long.

3. Telegraph Station – The Spy Work

When the coast is clear, switch to your secret telegraph station to send notes via morse code. Tap a button to create dots and dashes rhythmically. We know morse code is hard, so don’t worry about the timing, just make the correct order of dots and dashes. You have limited mistakes before sending wrong intel (which results in death, obviously). Oh and yes, there will be a morse code alphabet table available for you.

You will find what message you have to send by cross checking your spy manual with your notes. For example:

• If information is about ALIENS → send out “There is a star man waiting in the sky”
• If information is about WAR → send out “All you need is love”

Loop Summary

1. Take order → listen for secrets
2. Note intel → store in notepad
3. Pack orders → maintain cover
4. Send intel (if time allows)
5. Repeat

RCA requirements

Baseline requirements

R1 Must be playable on (PC OR WebGL) AND (Android OR iOS)

Will be playable on PC and Android. Since it will be mainly point and click, everything should be achievable both on touchscreen and on keyboard/mouse. The graphics will be simple and not demanding so performance wise it should work too.

R2 Must contain reasonable sound effects and music.

Will have the usual fast food chain sound effects that we all know of (the beeps, the hum, the buzz etc). NPC dialogues will have the Animal Crossing or Undertale like sound effects. Then there will be the morse code beeping sound of course.

R3 Must be stable and playable at reasonable FPS

Again, because of the art style and a single space where the player is should have reasonable performance.

R4 UI that adapts for different reasonable screen sizes

Image from https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3337911322

I am thinking about the main menu being a birds eye view of the pentagon, clicking in the middle where the food court is will start the game, outer ring might be settings and the outside of pentagon would be exit. When I click on settings it could zoom on the roof and it will display the settings.
This should easily fit on vertical or horizontal screens.
I will also try to have each station have the interactive parts in the center vertical part of the screen. In case the mobile version needs to also have some dialogue bubbles off-screen, I will either make the bubbles appear in the center pointing on the edge of the screen outside, or I will allow limited swipe movement to look around a bit.

R5 Extensive use of at least 1 plugin

I will try to use DoTween a lot. I think it could be used for animating the dialogue bubbles where the text animates. The food in their sliders could be animated when they arrive or are taken out. Putting the food in the bags. The morse code machine being clicked. Pretty sure the UI of the computer where I make the orders can use tweens as well + same goes for the screen that shows the orders. The spy book can use tweens to open and close or turn pages. Can’t think of every single instance where I will use it, but I will try my best to use it everywhere I can.

R6 Non-trivial use of Editor Extensions, so your game can be easily extensible for a game designer.

This will be probably mainly used for the dialogues of the NPC’s and the spy book tutorials so that I can easily add new orders, secret information dialogue texts, secret messages etc. Also it will probably be used for the food items too, since in a hypothetical full release the game would add more and more food types.

R7 Game controls using new input system

Since it will be mainly point and click I’m not sure how much of the new input system I will use. But there could be a hard mode and easy mode, where in the easy mode you can just write the secret message using normal letter keys and in hard mode it will have to be clicks or a certain button that has to be pressed shortly for dot and long for dash.

R8 Using URP

Will use URP. Probably will use stencil for edge highlight on item hover.

Complex requirements

C2 Animation

As I have mentioned I will try to use tweening everywhere I can. I also have to animate the NPC’s walking, waiting in queue (maybe some with crossed arms), talking to each other, maybe shaking hands, eating, sitting on a bench, someone might run somewhere,… There could also be a small window where you see in the kitchen where they make the food, so animating them could also be done. The player’s hands could also be animated as he interacts with the things.

(Other possibility) C4 Extensive use of Artificial Agents (AI) and NavMeshAgents

There will be a lot of NPC’s, so they will definitely use NavMesh and will have some AI logic for choosing a random order, sometimes saying something confidential - there will have to be some central logic deciding if there isn’t too much orders, or too little info, or to not repeat it etc.

Additional requirements

A3 Use particle system

I think I could use particle effects for a lot of the interactions - putting food in a bag and finishing the order, morse code, maybe each secret info being said will trigger a particle system that is different for each type of the info, so that the player knows about it visually.

A5 (In case of C4) Extensive use of animations

As was mentioned in C2

A8 Game settings UI

I would make settings for the modes of morse code gameplay, graphical settings for how much crunch the visuals have etc., scaling UI or text size, audio groups for sound effects, voices and music etc.

A11 Extensive use of inverse kinematics

The NPC’s will definitely use Inverse Kinematics so the animation will be easier to implement. The player’s hands would use this too.

A13 Add localization

This would mean having multiple language versions of the dialogues, food names and maybe having a morse code alphabet table for cyrillic alphabet.