Sarah Kang – Looking Outwards -12

Nour is an interactive visual game focused on playing with food and its aesthetics. Controls can range from keyboard to external plug-in controllers that send note signals. Nour was created by TJ Hughes, a video game designer and digital artist, and also founder of Terrifying Jellyfish, an independent game company that focuses on releasing content with “color, playfulness, and aesthetics”.

The second project is the famous Nintendo DS game, Cooking Mama, which is a food cooking simulation game that takes the player through the various steps of cooking a recipe. Cooking Mama was developed by Cooking Mama Limited, formerly Office Create, a game developing company.

Cooking Mama was a childhood favorite game for me; something about being able to cook all these recipes on a touch screen was so satisfying and addicting. The differences between Cooking Mama and Nour lies in the aesthetics focus of the games; while Cooking Mama is more focused on actually simulating the cooking process, Nour has no goals or objectives in the game. Nour is an experimental food art game that focuses on the visuals and unconventional ways of playing with food.

Our goal for our final project is to take inspiration from both these projects to create a visually appealing, interactive cooking experience.