Smoothie Operator

Pair up humanized fruits.

Meet Orange, Banana, Grapes, Kiwi, and Blueberry — humanized gijinka fruits that are looking for a partner. Pair them up with their best fit using your Number Keys! Absolutely nothing weird going on here.

Welcome to the first game of the Produce Cinematic Universe (the Produce-iverse) series!

Play the second game in the series if you want more (or less) of this game!

*No fruits were harmed in the making of this game.

·········• FEATURES •·········

• Play with the row of numbers on your keyboard!
• Meet 5 humanized fruits and get to know what they're looking for!
• Battle to the death with them! 
• Bop your head to Miitopia music (quite the underrated soundtrack)
• Question nothing!!

·········•  CREDITS  •·········

• Kimya Taheri - Game Concept/Design, Character Design/Art
• Ben Hecker - Programming, Game Design
• Media:
  • Background Music: Miitopia OST - Stage (Sky Land)
  • Win Music: Miitopia OST - Battle Result
  • Background Art: "Smoothie Bar" from Lolirock
  • A few sounds from Freesound.org with some mixing and editing.

·········•  INFO  •·········

• Engine: Unity
• Date: September 2024
• Time to Make: 1 Day
• Made For: 1 week rapid prototype project for a studio game class, NYU Game Design
• Other Software: Procreate

·········•  AUTHOR'S NOTE  •·········

With this game, I had 2 pillars: to make a game that would confuse the player, and to make people mildly down bad for inanimate objects. On that second note, one of my favorite things to draw is humanized versions of objects or items (this is often known as “gijinka” in east Asian communities). Since I really enjoy character design and narrative, I wanted to make a game that highlighted these two aspects. 

For this project we were given two constraints: a set of controls, and a subject. My subject was a “fruit bowl,” and my set of controls were “a row of keys”. I was excited for the fruit bowl part, because I could use that to draw and design humanized characters, but I wasn’t sure what to do with the row of keys. I came up with over a dozen different ideas of what I could do and many of them were not feasible given the time constraints, or I didn’t think they were interesting enough. I knew I wanted to do something silly involving the fruit characters, so I came up with the idea of doing a dating/match-making game. After brainstorming with some peers, I settled on a design: several fruits are humanized. One fruit at a time will request another fruit, describing its attributes. The player has to figure out which fruit is being described, and if correct, the two fruits will spar/fight and create a smoothie. The fighting aspect would be described/shown in vague terms, settling somewhere between “suggestive” and “concerning.” If the player chooses to “question it”, the game application quits.

Originally, the game had far more narrative elements: the fruit had different dialogue, there were 8 or so fruits to choose between, the two chosen fruits walk into a house before the screen cuts to black, and the player is “debriefed” on how smoothie making works, with the explicit instructions to never “question it.” And if the player does, the characters, disgusted, will explain that they’re fighting in a controlled space and that there’s nothing weird about this smoothie shop. You are then promptly fired and the game application quits.

The game also had a few more scoring options as well. The amount of hits required to advance the fight sequence would increase over time, and there would also be a timer. The more fruits you paired together correctly, the more points amassed until the hits are too hard to hit within the time limit and the game ends. In the game’s current state, it unfortunately has no scoring elements. Unfortunately the game had to be cut in many ways to fit the scope, especially since I needed a great deal of help with the coding.

Finally, I found sound effects (from various artists on FreeSound.org) and music (from the Nintendo game Miitopia) to fit the game. I felt as though the harsh cuts with the music added to the player’s confusion and made the “You made a new smoothie!” screen feel bad, even though there’s technically nothing wrong with it.

Overall, I feel my game accomplished its goal: I’m happy with the character designs, the gameplay loop, and the confusion inflicted on the player. I wish I had more time to implement more elements, but I’m still happy with the result. 

Fun Tidbit: This was originally going to be a much more fleshed out game, where you eventually confront the big bad "Strawberry" and fight her to the death! But this ended up turning into its own visual novel, which you can play HERE!

·········•  KNOWN BUGS  •·········

• made in a few days so anything is possible, lol
• mac builds don't always work (blame apple)
• in web build, game will "freeze" once you "question it" — this is actually not a bug. This would normally be where the game closes itself if you have it downloaded, but WebGL doesn't work that way so it just freezes... lol. Blame WebGL