- AUGUST UPDATE - 30 August 2025
OverviewThis is an exciting update for me as I'll be putting up a public prototype of The Perfect for people to play and share! I hope you'll check it out, leave a review, and share it around! Here's the link: itch.io The past 2 months have been really busy trying to set up this milestone as best as I can. Updating steam pages, websites, social media, etc. I'm really proud of what my Art Director and I churned out to get to this stage and I would really appreciate it if you took a look at what we have built so far!!
- JUNE UPDATE - 30 June 2025
Overview As I continue to iterate on The Perfect Bowl, the vision and direction of the game gets ever slowly clearer. This time round, I've been (again) testing out new mechanics and changing existing ones to get the experience to be closer to what I would like it to be. On the art side, we've settled on a look for the assembly portion of the game that makes it look more cohesive with the character art. Although we had to sacrifice my original vision of it, I think in the grand scheme of things this would be the better way forward. Art New Character Art Meet Kosuzu! A wonderfully eccentric and fruity man late in his life. Not the sharpest tool in the shed but knows how to bring out the zest in life. Character Sketches Some early character sketches. New Hand Drawn Textures and Outlines It was a tough decision but we decided to forgo the strong DOF (background blur) in favour of a more il…
- The Perfect Bowl June Update - 30 June 2025
June Update Post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2976790/view/532102384016426419 --- Follow Me! ːsteamhappyː
- The Perfect Bowl April Update - 7 May 2025
April Update Post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2976790/view/532097310616715956 --- Follow Me! ːsteamhappyː
- APRIL UPDATE - 7 May 2025
Overview I am extremely happy to announce that I finally have an Art Director on board to help with all things art related! The overall vibe of the game will still stay the same but the style would evolve over time. I hope you'll stick around to see the awesome stuff that she comes up with. Aside from that, I have completed the most of the refactoring and UI overhauls as mentioned last update which I am very excited to share! Steam Store Page Over the course of the last few months, I'm getting a better understanding of what The Perfect Bowl is about and I think its time for an update! Please do check out the new Steam Store Page!! Art Our First Character Key Visual Introducing Jim's dad! Strong and gruff with a passion for Ramen. Being a single parent is tough. Not knowing how to communicate with his child is tougher. The art style is not fully locked in yet but Dad represents the direc…
- The Perfect Bowl March Update - 28 March 2025
March Update Post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2976790/view/532094139769030049 --- Follow Me! ːsteamhappyː
- MARCH UPDATE - 28 March 2025
Overview If you take a look at my update schedule you might have noticed that I missed out on last month oops. I apologize for that but I went on a short break and now I'm back ENERGISED. Thanks to the break I was able to come back with fresh eyes, new perspectives, and new ideas! (Future) Features "Ailment" System I was able to come up with the idea that I think would work to help tie the narrative closer to the gameplay. I intend to bring forward narrative part about "helping customers" and "changing their emotions" by treating it almost like a doctor-patient relationship except that you get to choose what ailments you cure with your ramen. When conversing with customers before serving ramen, there will be critical moments during dialogue options that essentially forces you to choose which ailments to affect the customer. I believe this would be a suitable abstraction of the moments i…
- The Perfect Bowl January Update - 6 February 2025
January Update Post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2976790/view/497186807117513295 --- Follow Me! ːsteamhappyː
- JANUARY UPDATE - 6 February 2025
Overview With the addition and changes stated from my last update (December Update), The Perfect Bowl is at a state where I am proud of. I think it has a pretty good foundational gameplay loop and play testers have validated that theory. There are still many things to polish and fix but seeing such progress is really exciting and motivating. Features Reworked Flavour System Unfortunately, this part will still need more time to cook. The biggest issue is that the mechanics are not tied closely enough to the narrative as much as I want. That being said, I'm still pretty happy with how this turned out and has gained me valuable insight on how I can possibly move forward. In this iteration, the player is required to hit a threshold of any of the flavours based on the toppings used in the bowl. This unlocks dialogue options for the player in response to their customers' conversation. Each di…
- The Perfect Bowl December Update - 29 December 2024
December Update Post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2976790/view/532085430055602329 --- Follow Me! ːsteamhappyː
- DECEMBER UPDATE - 29 December 2024
Overview Happy Holidays! December was spent focusing on initial playtests and impressions. I'm proud to announce that the playtests were a success in that game breaking bugs were found and insights were gleamed. The gist of it is that the game loop didn't have enough depth to it. I thought of some solutions which would hopefully address these issues. Additional features to add over the next month: Inventory and Supply Shop System (Completed) Reworked Flavour System End day Favourite Bowl Mechanic Features Inventory and Supply Shop System In the hopes of making the player be more conscious of what ingredients they add to the Ramen bowl, I thought I would make ingredients have a limited amount they can use (save for a few starting ingredients). This would tie in with a reworked flavour profile mechanic which I would go into detail in the next update. The player then restocks their invento…
- The Perfect Bowl November Update - 8 December 2024
November Update Post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2976790/view/536587777549009673 --- Follow Me! ːsteamhappyː
- NOVEMBER UPDATE - 8 December 2024
Overview November is basically a push to try to get a fully playable version of the game. Adding additional art work and features so that I can get some play testers to prod the game for game breaking bugs or extreme friction causing UI/UX. Features Day 01 (Tutorial Level) and Day 02 Dialogue Sequences Using Pixel Crushers Dialogue System plugin definitely made this much easier than it would have been without. Most of the time spent of this was modifying the system to fit my needs and create exceptions to the pace game for the tutorial stage. Introducing features bit by bit. Dialogue Options Hints This feature was thought up when I reallized even I had a difficult time trying to figure out what combinations of flavour would lead to which dialogue branch. I also wasn't going to design and develop a complex system to take into account of how every flavour would affect every dialogue. Just…
- The Perfect Bowl October Update - 2 November 2024
October Update Post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2976790/view/4463723296443072958 --- Follow Me! ːsteamhappyː
- OCTOBER UPDATE - 2 November 2024
Overview This month will be one of those months where not much is happening in the foreground but significant progress has been made in the background. I bit the bullet and finally have a dialogue and story planned out for the first few in game days of The Perfect Bowl. Its only something temporary just to give future investors and collaborators an idea of the story and full game loop. This took about half a month. The remaining half a month I was able to add in some world building elements for better immersion and minor polishing. Unfortunately no bug busting this time. Features New Location Sequence Welcome to Calor. A country found on the Antarctic planet of Xibalba. What better place to serve a nice warm bowl of Ramen eh? To help with immersion and storytelling, I have added in some animated sequences to show when the main character has travelled to a new location in Calor. Each loc…
- The Perfect Bowl September Update - 28 September 2024
September Update Post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2976790/view/4686648306945865981 --- Follow Me! ːsteamhappyː
- SEPTEMBER UPDATE - 28 September 2024
Overview The last few months working on the arguably more important aspects of the game really took a chunk of my energy and motivation. It felt like I was going nowhere because even though the quantity of task I needed to do was small, completing each task was arduous. So this month felt really productive with all the bug fixing and additional features and improvements which has been a great motivator. There is always more to do but I am ready to face them head on until I see The Perfect Bowl out there in the world. Improvements Topping Mover UI & Topping Border I think I have finally settled on a system that I'm happy with! After some inspiration from looking at Tiny Glade, I took the 3D UI approach mixed with what I had previously. Interactions regarding spatial movement of the topping is presented using 3D arrows while additional features are shown in 2D with a bar that follows the…
- AUGUST UPDATE - 31 August 2024
Overview I've been thinking a lot about how I can best tie in world building, story, and gameplay mechanics into a nice cohesive bundle. This would be the crux of the development process. I've also been researching on how I can make assembling the Ramen bowl more fun which has led me to adding dynamic physics to the noodles. I settled on using softbody physics, after many failed attempts at other dynamic physics like rope physics, hopefully some whimsy to this cosy game. Features Softbody Physics for Noodles What can I say? It brings me such joy and childlike delight to play around with softbody physics and I hope it does for players too. I am extremely grateful and appreciative that a very powerful realtime physics solution exists in Unity. If you have the means to, I would highly recommend the solutions provided by VirtualMethod, Obi. Without their resources, I don't think I would hav…
- JULY UPDATE - 3 August 2024
Overview As you may notice, this update is a little late. The month of July has been pretty busy so I couldn't work on The Perfect Bowl as much. Additionally most of the work done is on systems so there isn't much going on visually. I suspect this would be the trend moving forward as I would also be focusing on the actual meat of the game which is story related stuff. Features Unity Dialogue System Plugin This is where the bulk of my time working on The Perfect Bowl has been. Trying to pickup a new system is time consuming but from what I've seen so far, this would be worth it in the long run. Shifting viewports Getting this to work was quite tricky. This was done using two cameras, manipulating their viewport transforms and FOVs using Tweens. It took me awhile to understand that I had to make sure I had two separate post processing volumes covering each camera so that each camera has t…
- The Perfect Bowl June Update - 29 June 2024
Check out my first post on the game I'm currently working on, The Perfect Bowl, here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2976790/view/4264427597925989204 --- Follow Me! ːsteamhappyː
