Indie developers and industry professionals alike may turn to Kickstarter for any number of reasons. The popular crowdfunding website can make or break a project that otherwise might not be able to secure a publisher, or it can give veterans like Koji Igarashi the freedom to work on their own ideas. BlueGooGames' project lead Niclas Marie said the Kickstarter for Space Chef is primarily aiming to build a community.
Space Chef is a hybrid action and cooking game, taking inspiration from such titles as Stardew Valley, Don't Starve, and Overcooked. Players enter a procedurally generated galaxy that has hints of comedic sci-fi shows like Futurama and Rick and Morty, mixed with space westerns like Firefly — a personal favorite of creative and art director Tobias Tranell. It's up to players to learn how to solve environmental puzzles so they can gather ingredients and thrive as a chef, and BlueGooGames hopes to make that experience as personalized as possible for each person. Game Rant spoke with Marie and Tranell about Space Chef's origins, all-inclusive design aspirations, and Kickstarter campaign.
Space Chef: A Project Decades in the Making
Marie and Tranell are Swedish developers who met around third or fourth grade. Tranell said he is a lifelong gamer, which he credits as his biggest experience going into Space Chef, but he first approached Marie looking for help solving a puzzle in The Legend of Zelda on NES. After that they grew up as best friends; some nights they "went out to parties," others they sat around trying to make games together. They created custom maps in titles like Counter-Strike, and attempted a few fleshed-out projects in different engines that never made it past prototyping.
As life goes, their experiences led them down different paths, and those game maker aspirations faded into the background. Marie has 20 years experience as a software engineer and team leader at different companies, meanwhile Tranell built upon a childhood of creative ventures designing worlds and mechanics for RPGs by becoming a professional mapmaker. In 2019, he won a gold Ennie award for "Best Cartography" thanks to his work on Free League Publishing's Forbidden Lands tabletop game.
The duo are both married and have their own families. As of this writing Marie has a seven-year-old boy and four-year-old girl, while Tranell has two sons (seven and nine) and a new baby girl. In 2016 Marie learned about Unity through his brother-in-law and "started fiddling with it," realized it could be used to develop a game, and soon thereafter began spending more time with Tranell.
After messing with a few concepts that "didn't feel right" — Metroid-style adventures, racing games, tower defense games, and online multiplayer experiences among them — Tranell brought a picture of a hamburger to Marie. He said he was inspired by the "sloppy," cartoonish art style of a children's book illustrated by Kjell Thorsson, and that became the basis for Space Chef.
"To be honest, we had no idea what the game was about to be when we started. It grew on us, and we're still tossing ideas around. Today we have a pretty clear picture of what it will be, though."
Designing Space Chef for Everyone to Play
That art style, with Unity's lighting and ambient effects layered on top, spearheaded the next two-and-a-half years of development. Marie and Tranell wanting to avoid the glut of 3D and pixel art games out there, however, Space Chef did change over time. Russian artist Tanya Tengri joined BlueGooGames in September 2019 after Marie conducted a series of auditions. Tranell said they "wanted someone who could draw my style so it would be consistent through the game," but while Tengri excelled her work looked "too good," so they met in the middle.
The team has also picked up programmers and animators, largely as contractors, with representation from all over the world: Greece, Pakistan, and more. Marie said, "There's no discrimination based on location, gender, or anything" in BlueGooGames, and according to Tranell "it just felt good, felt right" to capture that open-mindedness in Space Chef's design. Similar to Stardew Valley there's no need for players to define themselves, they merely choose a body type and hair style that fits best. NPC interactions and romance follow the same principle, with players able to learn about and woo various characters while delivering their favorite foods.
Marie said he's connected with people and organizations who work on both representation and accessibility, and is open to getting more feedback from players to make the game as inclusive and welcoming as possible. A number of ideas are already in motion, from creating vegetarian and vegan menu options to looking at games with different text sizes and colorblind modes. Yet they are planning to do more research into solutions for potential issues like comfortably translating Space Chef into languages like Spanish with gendered words.
Space Chef's Kickstarter is Growing Its Community
Much of the aforementioned feedback is expected to come with Space Chef's Alpha and Beta — scheduled to begin in Q1 2022 and Q1 2023, respectively. Access is one benefit for Kickstarter backers at various levels, and thus far about 130 people have pledged enough to join the Alpha, according to Marie. As of this writing, Space Chef has raised nearly $40,000 USD since October 19, when it was originally asking for about $20,000 (since reduced by changes to the Dollar/Euro exchange rate).
Building a community with global indie developers and fans has been a goal for BlueGooGames' leads since the beginning. Marie said they had about 6,000 Twitter followers from sharing early footage that helped push the Kickstarter, which follows-up some attempts at creating YouTube developer logs. Those active connections have also helped by answering questions about mechanics like procedural generation, and with general marketing. For example, BlueGooGames reached out to Game Rant on the recommendation of Konitama's Chris Gottron, who was interviewed about his game Cloudscape in July 2021.
There are other benefits to crowdfunding. Marie and Tranell said they would like to work on Space Chef full-time, and the game's Kickstarter says BlueGooGames wants to hire more people. Additional features such as online multiplayer could also be added if they fit the team's scope and planned roadmap, though there are no physical items included in the Kickstarter to avoid "unneccessary waste." It says, "If we want to avoid that our real world looks like the universe of Space Chef in 100 years, we gotta take care of it." Any more funding the team might need can always come from investors or publishers, according to Marie, as this Kickstarter is a good proof of concept.
Marie feels Space Chef has captured a niche combination of genres people want to explore, in spite of "trolls" who compare its style to "scam" pull the pin ads for games like Gardenscapes on Facebook. Tranell said he's "honored" by the response, and the team is keen to make everyone feel involved.
"The idea of having people like our game is totally new to me, I've never experienced something like that before. I'm very humbled by the people who enjoy our game."
Space Chef is in development for PC, PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox, aiming for a Q3 2023 release. Its Kickstarter is live until November 18, 2021.
Source: Kickstarter