Originally published on: The quest for better ingredients.

A deep dive into the game’s markets

One of the aspects I find interesting to develop in a game that aims to offer a pseudo-simulation experience of managing a yatai is the markets.

Markets are responsible for providing the ingredients needed for the yatai owner to prepare the wide variety of dishes typically served at these street food stalls.

Instead of having a mega-market selling all types of ingredients, like a supermarket, I chose to create specialized markets. For example, we have fishmongers, greengrocers, butcher shops, and finally, stores that sell more varied products, such as flour, oil, rice, beverages, etc.

Although the game carries the subtitle “Fukuoka Street Food”, referring to the city of Fukuoka, which is a reference for yatai, I don’t intend to recreate the city. This means that the yatai the player manages, as well as the dishes prepared, do not correspond to reality.

Taking advantage of the freedom not to be tied to representing reality, I created a map of a fictional city that allows the player to explore, in a limited way, the city to discover new markets and other elements that I have not yet fully defined.

Not all markets will be available right away; the player will need to find them, either by exploring the city or by following recommendations from the customers themselves, in order to find new ingredients and better prices, all to improve their dishes.

Each market has a slightly different aesthetic, which, combined with the imprint of its owner, gives the place a "personality".

From the start, the premise of this game is: showing interest in someone's story is rewarding; therefore, it’s a great opportunity to include the shop owners as a means to develop stories in the game.

Thanks for reading this far.