Play as a magical chef! Hunt monsters and cook them into exquisite dishes to wow the judges and crush your opponents!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Artful October
over 8 years ago
– Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 09:43:17 PM
Hey Battle Chefs! October was a super busy month and we've got lots to show for it. Enjoy :)
Environments
First up, Matthew Yeager is going to be helping us out with environment art when he's not building the gorgeous Aerobat! His first task was to concept some of the new backgrounds. I'll let the pixels speak directly to you:
Skylands mockup
Caverns mockup
Backer Monsters
Yesterday, we sent out the first wave of emails to backers about designing their monsters. If you pledged at that tier and did not receive an email, please message us here immediately!
Skyland Monsters
The phenomenal Ben Li has been helping out with animating the next round of monsters for the Skyland! Here are rough animations of two of the new beasties:
Recipes
Juby and Marie Lum have continued to craft gorgeous dishes in different cuisines for your battle chefs to make! Check out these tantalizing options.
Town Upgrades
Now that the Brigade Town design is closer to being finalized, Eric did a pass on its background as well as the little rooms you visit. Here are a few pieces of those:
UI help
Our User Interface has been functional, but it's been taking too much time away from Eric. So, we've reached out to one of our Chicago pals, Benn Marion, for help. He just finished up work on Organ Trail: Final Cut, so he's got some time for BCB UI polish. You'll be seeing the fruits of his labors soon.
Moon Hunters
Mina's ready to make her debut in Kitfox Games' Moon Hunters! We're looking forward to returning the favor soon :)
Finally, I (Tom) got married at the beginning of the month! My wonderful wife Jen collaborated with Eric on a Trinket-centric groom's cake. Quite the delectable surprise!
Phew! Until next time, Battle Chefs!
Broilin' time!
over 8 years ago
– Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 10:51:54 PM
Hey Battle Chefs! Lots of fun stuff happened in September - PAX really turned up the heat :)
Skyland Rough Art
Eric drew a bunch of test stamps for the Skyland and I attempted to mix them into the prototype layout we've been working on. I can't wait until the real artists attack it!
Freelancers, go!
One of our goals for immediately after PAX was to start ramping up production. All those Kickstarter bucks are finally making their way to great people who will help get BCB served to you!
Chris has been an active part of the Chicago indie scene for forever and finished up a contract right as we started looking! He'll be tackling all sorts of systems and has already started improving the Skyland monsters' behaviors.
Juby is also helping out with dishes! She'll be crafting ones for Thrash. We are so excited to go from sketch or programmer-art placeholder food to beautiful, illustrated food!
We'll have a bunch more announcements about folks lending a hand soon :)
Tilted Food
You might have noticed that the Noodle Soup above is drawn at an angle, letting us see into the bowl a bit. After lots of discussion and a bunch of mockups, we've decided to draw all the recipes (and tables and pantry) from a higher angle so that recipes have more space to shine. This is particularly important for flat-topped things like soups and pizza, so we're glad to have made this adjustment before it was too late to change!
Posters, T-Shirts, and Aprons
We're close to having the t-shirts finalized! The PAX prints were nice, but we're currently trying to increase the fabric quality even further and adjusting the knives-and-fire image to be larger. Everyone receiving some of these rewards should have received a BackerKit email about finalizing your shipping address. Please don't leave that email unread, especially if you've moved recently or plan to!
That's all for this week, Battle Chefs! Can't wait to show off the Skyland monsters and behind-the-scenes campaign work soon :)
PAX to the MAX
over 8 years ago
– Thu, Sep 03, 2015 at 08:46:52 PM
Hey Battle Chefs! Sorry about this update being a few days later than usual since we were ultra busy at PAX Prime.
PAX Prime 2015
PAX is just about the biggest games show in America. We arrived on Thursday to prepare for the onslaught of tens of thousands of eager game fans. To stand out in the PAX 10, we decorated our booth like a fantasy kitchen table, complete with rolling pin, cutting board, and edible chocolate coins!
The positive response from all the players and bystanders was overwhelming. All three stations were always packed and players often returned with their friends in tow.
The BCB logo looks and tastes great!
A very special thanks goes to all the backers we met! More than a couple told us that the demo was even better than they expected, which made us so relieved and happy :)
Aprons and T-shirts
We did a test printing of your aprons and T-shirts for PAX and they came out GREAT! We wore them for the whole show, which really helped us stand out and encouraged everyone to check out the booth.
The shirts also came out beautifully. The knives and fire image looks great and moving the BCB crest to the sleeve was a great idea.
We realized upon returning that we wore the aprons over the shirts in all of our pictures except this one, from the last night on PAX, so sorry for the partial shot!
We'll be finalizing these and locking down shipping addresses soon, so if you're planning on switching addresses, please keep an eye out for the BackerKit emails! We are so thrilled to be able to send you such high-quality, unique rewards :)
Those Feels
For a taste of the comments and smiles we got on the show floor, here's some of the Twitter love:
Thank you Alienware
The booth wouldn't have been complete without laptops on the placemats and Alienware really came through for us. The laptops looked and played great, which drew the crowds straight to our chocolate coins and demo!
Until next time, Battle Chefs!
Demo Streaming Tonight!
over 8 years ago
– Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 09:58:56 AM
Hi Battle Chefs! Quick reminder about when and where you can see the PAX demo in action, including tonight!
If you're in Chicago, consider coming to the Geek Show and then the ChiNerdFest After Burner event on Friday, August 14th! We'll be demo'ing Battle Chef Brigade on a projector and have laptops for you to play on.
PAX Prime
And, of course, if you'll be at PAX Prime at the end of the month you can join hundreds of other fans and play the Battle Chef Brigade demo! We'll be in the PAX 10 area.
Hopefully we'll see many of you at these events! Stop by and let us thank you for backing our game :)
Surprise Showcase
Since we're in Chicago, it's hard to work in the games industry without hearing outrageous stories about Midway Games. There's an insider's documentary on Kickstarter right now, Insert Coin: Inside Midway's 90's Revolution, that we'd love to see funded. You can check it out here:
PAX Preparations
over 8 years ago
– Mon, Aug 03, 2015 at 02:10:43 PM
Hey Battle Chefs! July went by extra fast since we tackled just about every part of the game, including platforming, combat, demo polish, and the Skyland.
PAX Prime
We applied to the PAX 10 and got in! It feels great to be amongst such august company. This means that not only do "50 industry experts" think BCB is coming along well, but we also get a free booth at PAX Prime!
Please stop by and hang out with us and the demo if you'll be in Seattle at the end of August! We're planning to make our booth stand out in some fun chef-tastic ways, not the least of which will be a stylish new banner. Here's a start to it that Eric tweeted last night:
Local Demo
If you're in Chicago, consider coming to the Geek Show and then the ChiNerdFest After Burner event on Friday, August 14th! We'll be demo'ing Battle Chef Brigade that night.
Now that the demo has been battle-tested, we've split our time between upgrading it further and tackling the single-player story mode. After many brainstorms and discussions, we've got a really fun outline that we'll share with you...on release day!
Our current thinking is that we'll keep the plot under wraps so you can all enjoy it to the fullest, though if you're paying attention to us on Twitter you might piece together a bit of it :)
Analyzing each segment of gameplay that will make up the single player story also encouraged us to prototype a few new gameplay twists that use the cooking and hunting mechanics in fresh ways à la Master Chef. We'll share more about those in the coming months as they congeal!
We've also started blocking out areas of the Skyland with temporary art. Here's a sample from the first hour of that process:
The final product will look nothing like this, but it's important to start getting the feel for jumping and fighting in each new space, so this ugly duckling has been invaluable already!
Alienware
Even though BCB plays great on low-end computers, we've been talking to Alienware about help with machines at conventions and they've come through for us! The plan is for us to have high-end Alienware laptops at PAX Prime for everyone to play on. In return, we're going to ensure that AlienFX works with Battle Chef Brigade for a little extra immersion.
