Nara Order
Nara Order is a single-player tycoon style food stand game. The player takes the role as an employee at a food stand located in Nara park/Tōdai-ji, a famous tourist spot in Nara, Japan. Throughout the course of the gameplay, the player encounters a variety of customers ranging from normal kids wanting food and drinks to deers wanting biscuits, and potentially Buddha himself wanting a bowl of the blessed water commonly found outside temples. For each customer encountered, a ticket will appear at the top of the screen reflecting what the customer wants. The player’s job is to quickly provide them with their correct order. Each correct order adds to the total points of the player while each missed order decrements the player’s amount of lives. The player starts the game with three lives allowing them three missed orders before receiving a game over. The more you play the less time you will have to correctly deliver the order to the customer. The characters, environment, and food are all based on what we found/ate at nara park. Traditional clothing for the kids, the deer, buddha, and the ramen we had for lunch along with scrumptious eggs and a melon soda to wash it down.
Our game directly displays multiple historical references from our group trip to Japan. The background is a replica of an archway we walked under at Nara Park before entering Tōdai-ji, a historically notable temple where lies a Buddha statue worked on by over two million people across thousands of years. To reflect how prominent Buddhism is in Japan and specifically the location we chose as the setting of our game, we made Buddha a potential special customer the player can encounter. Directly outside the temple there is a water basin (aka temizuya) that visitors of the temple can use to cleanse their mind and body before entering. In our game, this water is one of the items Buddha will order from your stand. The deer which are a staple of Nara Park can also be found as a customer in our game. They order shika senbei, or deer biscuits, which are the regulated treat visitors of the park are allowed to buy and personally feed to the deer. We aimed to represent the beautiful diverse history displayed at Nara Park in our game. We found inspiration in how the deer were fed by school children, the intricate architecture or the temple structures, and the Buddha statue that was worked on by millions. This game is meant to honor their work and pay respect to the beautiful park we got to spend an entire day exploring and learning about the complex history which better allowed us to be immersed in their culture while visiting.
The art style was chosen to replicate the calm, simple yet dynamic atmosphere of Japanese Buddhist temples where intricate traditional architecture blends with the dynamic, evergrowing nature interwoven and around it. It is reminiscent of the Ghibli/semirealistic anime style that is popular across multimedia franchises in Japan. We focused on making the game enjoyable to look at but also easy to pick up and play at any point with little to no skill required besides standard hand eye coordination. This allows our game to mimic Nintendo's style of making games playable for all ages, simple enough for mastery, but complex enough to allow some people to get extremely high scores. Allowing up to three failures before reaching a game over allows for mistakes to be made and adds a forgiveness factor. This game was originally brainstormed in a call a few days after landing back from Japan. However, the entire game is representative of the cross-cultural connections we made at the Game Jam held at Ritsumeikan University. There, we picked up new coding skills and art skills that are reflected in our game. As a group we learned a lot individually, working with people who aren't native speakers of our language, using platforms natural to us but foreign to them, delegating and communicating on what role each person should take on, but also then in turn helping each individual whenever they ask. We also learned new game perspectives from the university tours we were able to participate in such as renovating made styles of game rather than creating something beyond new. Taking inspiration from what has proved to already work, but building upon it and making it your own.
