There's a surprising number of games about food, from cooking food to driving food to raising animals to turn into food. Plus, soon enough we'll have the absurdly detailed food of Final Fantasy 15 to ogle. But few take the idea of 'food game' as literally as Nour, an "interactive food sim" that's currently on Kickstarter, with solo developer Tj Hughes asking for $25,000 to bring it to life. At the time of writing, it has raised $18,836 and will run for another six days.
"Nour is an interactive exploration of the aesthetics of food," Hughes writes. "The game doesn't limit your play with goals or objectives; you're free to have open-ended fun while you play with your food, without the mess to clean up afterwards. You are presented with scenes full of ramen noodles, boba tea, popcorn, and you mash buttons at will to interact with the food in curious and unconventional ways."
Nour started as a way for Hughes to experiment with 3D modeling and eventually grew into an appetizing ramen simulator, which led Hughes to consider what about the way food looks makes people hungry. Now Nour has ice cream with a sprinkle shower, a meat grinder mini-game, an army of toasters, and other oddities. More scenes are also planned, including boneless pizza, "very dramatic" donuts, sushi and, obviously, avocado toast.
Although it was designed with grid and keyboard controllers like the Midi series in mind, a normal keyboard will let you control Nour just fine. Different keys do different, weird stuff, from spawning piles of meat to rotating dishes. It's not so much cooking food as making a mess of it, but it looks every bit as cathartic.
Depending on the success of its Kickstarter, Nour will come to PC in early 2018, with an early alpha release planned for Steam.
