Cooking. Recipes or freeform?

[Perry]

I have recently finished adding the cooking system to my game, but have been trying to decide if I should add things to cook such as stew for example. To cook stew you would need any 2 vegetables and any 1 meat. This would add some structure, but still allow freedom in cooking.

The way I currently have it is that each item that can be cooked is either a 'base' or an 'addon'. You need at least one base, which are usually heavy foods like potatoes or meats. You can use either 1 base and 1 addon or 2 bases. This adds some structure while allowing more freedom.

Which method would provide more entertainment while cooking? Should I scrap the base/addon method and allow total freedom in cooking? Any other thoughts?

Thanks.

[hallsofvallhalla]

In Forsaken Sanctum I made cooking where each item was a recipe, after the player cooked the base item they could then add other ingredients to make the recipe even better.

I then moved on to players could cook anything together up to 5 ingredients and they named the item themselves. The worth and value of the item was based on how well it was cooked and what went in it. So if a player added Corn and blueberries they could name it Blue Corn, though it wasn't worth very much

[Perry]

Thanks for the feedback halls. Yeah the first PBBG forsaken sanctum really had a lot of freedom. I still remember how fun that much freedom was. It has inspired the direction I am trying to take Operation Terraform.

I have been playing around with it the way it is now and I think once a lot of items are created into the game it is going to be more fun to have a very freeform and flexible system like I have.