Devlog 1: The Journey Begins

Hello and welcome to our first devlog! We’re Team Seabird Supper, and we’d like to introduce you to our game, Dinner Is Served!.

Project Overview

Dinner is Served! is a single player open world adventure game where you play as a migrating seagull with a food blog and a penchant for petty theft. You’ll have to explore a small coastal town, infiltrate its restaurants, and pester the locals to find your next favorite dish! Heavily inspired by other cozy games like Untitled Goose Game and Little Kitty Big City, this project is an ode to exploration, whimsy, and mischievous birds.

Who We Are

Our team is made up of seven members working in a variety of overlapping departments, which we’ve outlined below. 

Makiyah Harris: Project Lead, Programming, Level Design, 2D Art, Story

Ky Fiala: 3D Character Art/Animation, 2D Art

Nick Hansen: Programming, Lighting

Gavin Hughes: Level Design, 3D Environment Art, Story

Logan Jackson: Level Design, 2D Art, Story

Autumn Lewis: Level Design, Lighting

Adam Reaman: Level Design, 2D Art

What We’re Working On

Over the past month, our team has been hard at work laying the groundwork for our game with a busy pre-production phase! After working together to brainstorm missions, mechanics, and aesthetic references, we moved on to some more specialized tasks, such as creating concept art, level sketches, sandbox levels, and more.

Story and Art

Our story team was instrumental in developing the overarching plot, setting, and tone of the game. Together, we decided on a nonlinear plot structure with a fixed beginning and end but variable middle. We also defined the game’s setting, settling on a fictional coastal town in southern Florida.

From there, the art team began developing the visual identity of the game and its world. We decided to go for a stylized and colorful look.  Logan, Gavin, and Makiyah gathered a plethora of reference images for the game’s environment, pulling from locations like Italy, Norway, and the American southeast as well as other games. 

In addition, Ky created concept art for our avian player character, a ring-billed gull. After a few rounds of iteration, they settled on a final design and began working on the 3D character model. Makiyah created sketches to explore potential NPC designs, and Logan created concepts for the game’s UI.

Level Design

Our game contains a series of missions players must complete by finding and eating different foods around the town. Our level designers are currently in the process of building and testing these major mission spaces. To start off, each member of the team created sketches for one or more missions, marking player pathways, hazards, objectives, NPCs, and other elements to communicate gameplay ideas. 

For example, Adam designed a mission where the player must infiltrate a construction site, sneaking past workers and climbing scaffolds to steal one unlucky employee’s lunch. Logan was responsible for designing the ice cream mission, Gavin was responsible for the blue crab (a.k.a. the grand finale) and coconut shrimp missions, Autumn was responsible for the chip mission, and Makiyah was responsible for the French fry and key lime pie missions. In addition, Adam and Gavin have also contributed to a layout for the greater open world map.

After reviewing and refining our sketches, the level design team jumped into Unreal to start grayboxing. First, Makiyah set up a few test levels and prototyping materials the team could use to denote certain hazards, object types, and objectives. Then, Logan, Gavin,  Adam, and Autumn each blocked out their respective missions and are currently working on the rest.

Programming

Meanwhile, our programmers have begun implementing character movement and other mechanics in-engine, testing out their functionality in a sandbox environment. So far, Nick has been focusing on player locomotion, adding abilities such as walk, run, jump, and fly to a placeholder character. Building off of that, Makiyah has updated the existing movement and camera controls to take advantage of Unreal 5’s input mapping context system. She has also started working on implementing interactive objects, including items the player can pick up, push, and/or pull.

We hope you’re hungry for more because we’re just getting started! Be sure to check back in two weeks for more Dinner Is Served! updates.