- 01Read required categories
- 02Compare later uses
- 03Commit a combination
- 04Inspect remaining orders
Recipe substitutions
A recipe accepts ingredient categories instead of one exact item. Several combinations produce the same result, but consume resources with different future uses.
The player's decision
Fulfil the order now with a rare ingredient, or wait for a common substitute and preserve the rare one?
Original scenario
Original setup: soup accepts any mushroom, but tomorrow's medicine needs a blue one. With one blue and one brown mushroom, the future requirement must be visible before cooking.
Start with this prototype
Build a crafting puzzle with three orders and five ingredients. Match categories, preview consumption and future shortages, and win by filling all orders. Allow changes before confirmation; omit a gathering map.
Change one variable
Vary substitutes per category: one removes choice; universal substitutes erase planning.
What to observe in a playtest
Can players explain what they preserved before confirming? Do failures follow a choice rather than invisible consumption?
Take the full design card
Includes rules, scope, tuning questions and sources for further planning. It does not create a project automatically.
Original analysis · version 1
Common pitfall
Automatically spending the rarest ingredient turns planning into a hidden trap. Show consumption and allow manual selection.
Observations and sources
Cases refer to public documentation. Developers and community wikis are credited separately; document review is not a claim of hands-on testing.
- Stardew Valley
Some dishes accept any fish, so ingredient choice changes the value left in inventory.
- Don't Starve
The crock pot matches food values and recipe priorities; fillers need not change the result.
Brief for the studio
Opens the AI studio with the brief below in the input. You can edit it. Nothing starts automatically.
Build a crafting puzzle with three orders and five ingredients. Match categories, preview consumption and future shortages, and win by filling all orders. Allow changes before confirmation; omit a gathering map.
Covers are original AI-generated style illustrations. Game names reference publicly visible design choices and remain the property of their owners. This atlas does not supply screenshots or assets from those games. Prompts and combinations are original drafts for new games.