linecook

these busy birds will eat almost anything that falls into their gullet -- what will you feed them? they have their preferences, but people food beats bird food any day of the week!

a difficult, chaotic arcade game. now with local multiplayer support!

controls:

• left / right: move
• x / up: grab
• enter: pause menu (select "options" entry for volume controls)
• ESDF: movement keys for player 2

features

• 4 difficulty modes: "easy", medium, hard, and practice
• 3 different control schemes:
  • solo
  • local multiplayer
  • two-handed singleplayer 
• 4 challenging maps for 4 different flavors of gameplay

Recommended play order

The game modes combine into a whole mess of different options; here's a recommended playthrough order:

1. Play through practice mode
2. Check out the recipe book if you want to see the recipes
3. Try COOKS:1 MAP:NEST LEVEL:EASY
4. Try COOKS:2 MAP:NEST LEVEL:EASY -- play with one hand on the arrow keys and one hand on ESDF
5. Try each of the 4 maps with whichever COOKS and LEVEL settings you prefer
6. Try to beat MAP:CANON LEVEL:MEDIUM!

#ChainLetterJam

this was made for the #ChainLetterJam! Patrick nominated me; I had fun playing Arithmetic Bounce (my high score on hard mode is 24!), so I decided to try making a game that would feel similarly chaotic.

I took inspiration from the fact that none of the target numbers in Arithmetic Bounce were inherently good or bad; their value changed depending on the current goal. This became the ingredient/recipe idea in linecook: specific ingredients are sometimes good and sometimes bad, depending on the current recipe. I also liked the chaos and time pressure caused by gravity in Arithmetic Bounce; I've gone for a slightly different but still chaotic spin by giving the player two grabber-claws that are tricky to aim.

the continuation of this chain is: The Witch's Almanac

blog

I wrote about this game's design here. tl;dr: if you allow your game systems to play out as physical processes in the game world, there's a lot more opportunities for the player to interrupt and cause surprising interactions

thanks for playing!