Introduction

‘The New Somm’ is an Overcooked-inspired wine serving game where players must serve bottles of wine to each customer based on the types of requests each customer may have throughout a level.

These requests are based on the different aspects of a wine’s profile - Tannin, Acidity, Body, and the Country it’s from.

The player earns points if they get an order correct, and they lose points if they get an order incorrect.

Here, I plan to break down the different systems present in ‘The New Somm’, and discuss the reasoning behind certain decisions related to them.

Video showing gameplay of The New Somm

Wines

Each level has a set number of wines that are available to be served. The selection of wines change from level to level, and the available wine profile values increase as the player moves through the levels.

Upon starting a level, the player is greeted with a screen showing each wine that is being served for that level, along with the wine profile values that are available. The player can take as long as they want to view this screen - once they begin the level, they won’t be able to view this exact screen again.

A screen displaying the wines to be served is shown at the beginning of each level

I initially began with all of the wine profile values being available from the first level:

I quickly realised that this was overwhelming for players that weren’t familiar with wine - they would have to remember values they didn’t understand like Tannin and Body.
As a response to this, I altered it so that different values were introduced as the player progressed through the levels. So the first two levels are just based on Country, the next two introduce Tannin, etc.
This helped players in not feeling overwhelmed, and provided me with natural beats to explain what each term means (when I introduce Tannin, I have a note explaining what that is, etc.).
This also resulted in players feeling like they’ve naturally improved - they’ve gone from just knowing the country of 3 wines to being able to complete a level where they’re required to know the Country, Tannin, Body, and Acidity of 4 wines.

While players can view a complete overview of each wine in one screen at the beginning of a level, this isn’t possible during a level.

I initially did not have any way to view the wine information mid-level. My initial thought was that part of the experience would be having to perfectly recall the information, and that getting any order incorrect would just be part of the learning experience.

This was completely the wrong approach. It was completely unfair to new players and resulted in complete guesswork - a very negative experience.