The potential for environmental(?) storytelling with this is amazing. Crew that have been hoarding fruit bringing it to you during restricted rations then the rest of the crew finds out and they just stop showing up, or being bribed to redirect better food from the captain's table, or trying to manage the rationing requirements given to you by an increasingly insane captain while at the same time having to keep the crew happy or they'll turn on you.
Parrots stuffed with crackers, long saltpork, barrels of infinte biscuits, huge oysters, eldtritch fish, trying to keep the nightmares from stealing your ingredients while still serving dinner on time, your knives all go missing so you have to improvise all your recipies without them...
yeah, there's a lot of potential here.
I would also love it if they used real recipes for things, like the ones from Lobscouse & Spotted Dog, which is a tremendously well-researched and well-written book that has the recipes from the Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin series. This includes a recipe for boiled shit and millers (rats) in onion sauce.
As food supply dwindles you're forced to cook with more and more spoiled ingredients. Leading to sickness and hallucinations on top of the strange supernatural influence. Sleep won't come any more. Whatever is on the ship makes it impossible to rest. Vision is blurry and hearing is off. Which voices are real, which are the ghosts, which are purely your own? The wind has stopped and the ship hasn't moved is a week as the waves rock. People who you thought had jumped overboard are back making requests for dishes from their childhood. Spices you don't remember stocking and couldn't possibly be on board turn up in unexpected places. This looks like saffron. Does saffron taste like that all the time or is this something else entirely?
eldritch fish...
Well, there's your collab with Dredge already written!
Add in increasingly brutal reactions to bad meals from getting yelled at near the beginning to getting knocked to the floor and some ingredients stolen then eventually a guy takes a couple of your fingers off with a clever and walks away laughing as he pops them in his mouth
In the book Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, the main character Sadie is a video game designer who created his game in which you play a worker creating factory parts. If you ignore what's going on around you and just focus on winning the game by making the parts better and faster, eventually the game ends and it becomes clear that you were creating equipment for Nazis during the Holocaust and, thus, you lose the game.
Movies love to have twist endings in which something would have been obvious if you were paying better attention. I think more video games need to do this as well.
I heard of an art / board game like this as well, loading trains with as much cargo as possible. Once you get to the end of the game you discover what the cargo was.
The name of that game is:
spoiler
Train by Brenda Romero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_(board_game)
That idea was stolen from the famous board game Train
Off (Video Game) does this
Well it’s not the same concept, but if nautical horror is something you like, try Return of the Obra Dinn.
if nautical horror is something you like
(Seriously thanks for the rec though. I've heard that name before but haven't checked it out.)
Obra Dinn is so good! I recommend playing with a friend so you have somebody to discuss with.
And Dredge
I would 100% watch a YouTube let's play about this game.
Not exactly the same but this game looks awesome, thanks for dropping it here.
Return of the Obra Diner
its not the same, but have you guys tried return of the obra dinn?
it has this sorta vibes.
Reminds me a bit of Viscera Cleanup Detail
https://store.steampowered.com/app/246900/Viscera_Cleanup_Detail/
You’re a janitor at some kind of secret science facility where monsters start killing people. Never played it, but love the concept.
Yeah, that game some great environmental storytelling, so much lore but you're just the janitor
Being able to look out the porthole, sometimes seeing a kraken. Crew in the mess start getting possessed, eyes turn red, etc. BGM turns from jovial shanties to mixed with eldritch whispering.
Sounds so much fun
Try Closing At 2. It's a bartender version of what's described...kind of. Gets very insane very quick.
That sounds like something from the Unfathomable board game
Among us in real live 🌚
I love it, it really makes for great immersive experience even for people who aren't used to RPG settings. The Deep ones are always on the move, so there is the omnipresent sense of impending doom, and that gets everyone nervous and looking kinda sus.
But it takes a while to finish one run, with first-timers it can take over 3 hours.
I still recommend it and push it on other people :)
Fatal Feast
This could be the prequel to PO'd.
This sounds like that "can you fry an egg at the top of Mt Everest" game.
There's a horror game where you bake pizzas in a restaurant
Lacey's Diner.
The latest Monkey Island
except instead of playing as guybrush, your just a chef he keeps stopping by telling you about his increasingly weird forays with a pirate
