Cooking Mama Cookstar

 

    Cooking Mama: Cookstar was my first professionally shipped game. I worked on the main development team at First Playable Productions. There I:

• Iterated on minigame design
• Implemented new minigames
• Iterated on motion control for switch and input backend
• Reworked the audio system
• Helped port to PS4

Motion control was an uphill battle, we constantly iterated on versions and the clients had a lot of input as to what felt better. One of the problems we experienced was that motion would get tuned to individuals, so one person playing the game would do it perfectly while someone else would struggle. The game now notices if you are having trouble and adjusts the thresholds, but it may have not been enough in the end. I would have liked more time to tune these values.

One of my first tasks was to rework much of how audio is loaded and played asynchronously. I added a system to preload the audio, and later down the line iterated on the CMS for audio.

The Ps4 port went over fairly smoothly. We have interchangeable input backends per platform, so once the Ps4 one was completed, much of the work was related to Ps4 specific mechanics like trophies.

I worked closely with the art and animation team to implement what they desired. Overall I would call this a great learning experience.