Ingredients and reviewing

[Antti-san]

I was wondering about the ingredients. What are your personal viewpoints about the incredients? Do they necessarily have to be involved in the game mechanics or can they be used only as the theme of the game?

I like to think them as a thematic component rather than a guideline towards creating the game system around the ingredients. I'll be reviewing the games from this viewpoint, although good mechanics are good even if you name them after the ingredients.

[Kuma_Pageworks]

I'm going on the premise that the ingredients need to be integrated into the game - preferably on a mechanical level, but certainly on a thematic level. So far I've had to take every game as it comes - I can't generalize on how the ingredients hit me.

I am a bit tougher on the time thing - I feel there has to be some sort of reasoning behind the time scale picked.

[Jason Petrasko]

Ok, I'll be honest. I hate the time aspect of this game chef. Here are my reasons:

1.) I find it hard enough to get into play 'mode' and actual play without needed something that generates more pressure.

2.) I have read 2 of my games I need to judge so far, and both use the 6 hour sessions with at least 2 weeks between them. This makes it impossible to actually playtest them during the judging, which I would like to do for each game.

3.) It seems to me there is a reason why games with this kind of structure aren't popular, like- see point #1. All the games for this game chef are strapped with this ill-used feature.

I'm not blaming AndyK (of course!), cause when I first saw the time theme I went 'hey, this sounds cool!'. It wasn't until after and during the week that I began to discover how I actually felt about it

[Isbo]

[Eric J. Boyd]

[Joshua BishopRoby]

I want the games to be about the ingredients. I could really care less if there's a stat called Steel (and am, in fact, getting tired of that stat), or that they renamed Player Character as Actor or whatever. This mostly seems tacked on instead of really used in a deft manner. However, if the game is about the ingredient and because of that one of the stats or mechanics is named after the ingredient, that sort of organic use is all good in my book.

[Antti-san]

[Doug Ruff]

[Lebrante]

[talysman]