Toca Kitchen Sushi was the first project I worked on at Toca Boca. It’s the 4th app in the Toca Kitchen series and this app focuses on making sushi. We worked on the app during the later part of 2018 and the game released in December 2018. You can find the trailer for the app below and download the game from either the App Store or Google Play.
Something I really appreciated by working on this app was the clear target audience (Kids 6-9yrs) and getting the opportunity to playtest our app with the kids on multiple occasions. I was in charge of the overall vision of the project, writing the game design document, making wireframes, mockups, and balancing features such as which food combination that would give what reaction. I was also in charge of all the playtesting and making sure the kids’ feedback lead to any necessary iterations in the app.
Paper prototype
I started the project by making a paper prototype which was the first version that I play-tested with kids before we had any digital prototypes. I enjoy making these early versions of game flows and it helps to quickly identify problems but also to start a discussion with our target audience about their expectation of the new app.
The game vision
The game focus on giving the player multiple interesting and broad tools to use in shaping different dishes. These dishes can then be served to the restaurant’s different customers. Players can choose to make them a nice, well-cooked dish, or they can add a mountain of spices and mix the craziest ingredients they can imagen to make the customers disgusted and terrified of the dish.
The different tools
In order to prepare the dishes, the player has access to 4 different tools: The frying pan, the shaping machine, the rolling mat, and the chopping board. The shape machine and the rolling mat were the two more complicated tools to make since they are more connected to the sushi making and thus also completely new for this app. The goal was to let the player create maki rolls and nigiri but still keep the tools broad enough so that the player could come up with their own dishes as well!
Serving station
Another thing that was new for this app was the serving station where the player can prepare the dish before they serve it to their customers. This station lets them select the plate, add any prepared food items, and also add decoration to finish it off! The stacking system and rules for this state were tricky to get in place but really rewarding to playtest with kids once we had it in.
