Food & Cooking Brainstorming Recap + New Theme (Patreon)

Hello everyone!

Sandrine here! Hope you all had or are having a great holiday season! We’re well rested and back on track! Today, I’ll share a summary of the latest community brainstorming session as well as the new theme!

Food & Cooking Brainstorming Recap  (For Patrons Only! Please don’t share)

Thank you all for participating in the Food & Cooking brainstorming session, we gathered many ideas from the comment section as well as from Discord and Reddit. Here’s a general summary of our notes for you. Please keep in mind that if you don’t see your idea there, it doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t be taking it into account when working on this aspect of the game. Please enjoy your ideas below!

• 📖 Different kinds of food: Recipes, instant meals, finger food, condiments, leftover soup, homemade drinks, pet treats, etc.
• 🌍 Have a variety of meals from different cultures and allow modding to add more food and meals.
• 🍲 Customize recipes, have different variations of a meal (e.g.: different cake toppings) and have the meal’s appearance change depending on what you put on the plate.
• 🌿 Functional items to get food from: Fruit bowl, cookie jar, tea set, cheese platter, fondue set, small herb garden, etc.
• 🤵 Multiple course meal for special occasions.
• 🥣 Different food preparation would require different equipment.
• 📺 Different ways to learn recipes: Sharing recipes, cookbooks, internet, TV, cooking classes, experimenting, traveling, etc.
• 👩‍👦 Family recipes could be passed down to other generations.
• 🏷️ Classification of food by tags: Sweet, savoury, sour, salty, spicy, hot, cold, meat, fibrous, organic, seasonal, fresh, canned, etc.
• 🍣 Classification of recipes according to the preparation difficulty and complexity.
• 😁 Food and drinks could impact the Parafolk’s mood, energy, lifespan and their relationship with others.
• 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Group activities: Teach kids how to cook, have a family dinner, cook in group, gift food items, have neighborhood BBQs, picnics, etc.
• 👩‍🍳 Other activities: Donate to food banks, pack meals, write a cookbook, set up a lemonade stand, decorate cookies, store food, participate in food or cooking competitions, etc.
• 👩‍🌾 Careers: Chef, baker, waiter, barista, bartender, food critic, cookbook writer, cooking teacher, fisher, farmer, etc.
• 🐔 Raise animals or grow plants to get organic ingredients.
• 🥗 Ability to set and change a diet type (vegetarian, vegan, kosher, lactose free and others) for your Parafolk.
• 🤤 Cravings according to the weather, the Parafolk’s favourite food, if they are pregnant, etc.
• 🐶 Small interactions could happen while eating or cooking such as giving pets leftovers or stealing food off another Parafolk’s plate.
• 🍾 Store different goods in appropriate storage spaces such as refrigerators, freezers, pantries, cellars, and cabinets.
• 🥢 Have various styles and colors of tableware, including various utensil choices such as chopsticks.

Special thanks to Patron and Discord user Axart once again, who made a summary of his own during this month. As always, it’s been very helpful to us!

I also wanted to include a word cloud to see what has been mentioned the most in the comment section of the previous brainstorming session. This is what Patrons mentioned the most:

Results of the poll on the Food & Cooking brainstorming post showed that you were most looking forward to letting your Parafolks enjoy a family dinner, but also followed closely by learning recipes, going to the restaurant and getting ingredients. You guys are real Para-foodies!

Next Monthly Brainstorming: Generations  (For Patrons only! Please don’t share)

Let’s start the year with a brainstorming topic pretty different from the ones we’ve discussed recently. Generations will be the theme for this month’s brainstorming session. To get started, you can ask yourselves the following questions:

• 👁️ What physical and identity traits could be passed down from parents to their children?
• 📚 What kind of knowledge or tradition could be passed down to other generations? How would it be passed down?
• 🏺 What kind of items could be passed down from one generation to another?
• 👨‍👨‍👦 What would an intergenerational home look like in Paralives?
• 👵 What kind of specific interactions could different age groups have with each other? For example, grandparents with their grandchildren.
• 🏆 What generations related rewards or challenges would you like to see in-game?

We’d love to read all your ideas in the comment section of this post. As usual, we will open this brainstorming session to the public next week on Discord in the #generations channel and on Reddit.

Note: Due to the holiday break postponing the new theme, all monthly brainstorming will now start at the beginning of the month (usually the first Friday of the month). You’ll still have 4 weeks to share your ideas as usual.

Happy brainstorming!

Poll: Generations  (For Patrons only! Please don’t share)

Following the announcement of the new theme, we wanted to ask you a question: Would you prefer to play a single generation over a long period of time or would you like to move on and play the next generation frequently? You can answer in the poll below. If you can think of something that is not in the options, don’t hesitate to share it in the comments.

Have a good weekend!

Sandrine