Mechanics

This page documents some of the planned mechanics of the game, how they are written, and the logic behind the decisions for going about the game as we have.

Game context

PyCut takes place in a pizza shop where a customer places an order for a pizza. However, they are very vague about the toppings they would like on it. The player has a limited number of attempts to get the pizza right before the customer gets frustrated and leaves the store.

In advanced mode the player has to negotiate a group of customers trying to order a single pizza. The groups tries to work together to give you the fractions of toppings they want on the pizza.

Player goals

The player takes the role of a chef building a pizza. It consists of up to five toppings for a picky customer, and aims to please the customer before they grow frustrated and leave the store. The player has a limited number of attempts (limited by the number of available unused pizza crusts) to build a pizza that meets the customer’s requirements. They try combinations of toppings in an attempt to please the customer.

In advanced mode the chef is faced with a group of 4 people. You can increase the individual toppings by 1/4 and the group will try to tell you what they want more or less of until you have a pizza that pleases the whole group.

Conditions

Win conditions

The player successfully completes the challenge when the pizza they produce matches the requirements of the customer and the customer has happily left the store with their pizza.

Failure conditions

The player fails a challenge when they are unable to produce a pizza that meets the customer’s requirements in a limited number of attempts.

Player controls

The player is presented with buttons that have icons representing various pizza toppings (mushrooms, cheese, pineapple, anchovies, pepperoni). They can toggle these individual ingredients on or off to display on the pizza before presenting the pizza to the customer by hitting a button that will say Cook.

Full gameplay walkthrough

An individual challenge would feature a blank pizza in front of the player and a customer waiting to be served. They add ingredients and cook it for the customer. Once the customer sees the pizza, they will give feedback to the player and let them know if the pizza is perfect (meets all requirements), if it has too few ingredients (all ingredients are correct, but there is at least one ingredient missing) or if the pizza is wrong (at least one ingredient doesn’t belong on the pizza).

In the first case, the player will have completed the challenge. In the second case, the player must re-create the pizza, but try adding a new topping that didn’t previously exist until they get it right. In the third case, the player has to identify one or more ingredients on the pizza that the customer doesn’t like.

A blank pizza (no toppings) and a fully loaded pizza (all toppings) are both possible options, as well as any combination of any number of the five ingredients.