Enchanted Food

May this post be of general interest.

Quite a few video games have potions, and it is getting old. Minecraft and Terraria both have potion crafting. Potions use potion ingredients collected throughout the game world. What is the purpose of potions in these games? There are two main ideas for the purpose: the journey and the destination. The player goes on a journey through the game world each time they desire to reach the destination. The journey is a quest to acquire the ingredients for making the potions. And the destination is that the player gets temporary buffs that make them more powerful and able to complete other goals they may have in the game. Potions are secondary and are sub-goals for larger ones.

In Minecraft and Terraria, those goals are along the lines of defeating bosses and enemies, and making exploration and building easier. It is a way for the player to become more powerful temporarily. It rewards players for putting in effort exploring the game world and acquiring ingredients that prepare them for later stages in the game. Potions just become yet another item that happen to also be consumable. Later into the game, potions can become grind-y because the player eventually just realizes that they need to farm potion ingredients. But I have a different idea that may be implemented somewhere as a form of consumable buff items.

Here is an alternative to potions: enchanted foods. Enchanted foods open up an opportunity for connecting the game to real-life experience and knowledge. A game with food enchantment can justify having a whole cooking system... that happens also interacts with magic. This magic can make the system feel fantastical, and yet be relevant to real life. The cooking is especially a practical skill that someone playing video games could benefit from. You could legitimately claim that your game is educational (with the disclaimer that: no, there is no magic food).

This also opens up an interesting door in multiplayer games: deception. In Minecraft or Terraria, potions aren't very interesting items from a social point of view. You always know what they will do, because the items say what they are. If another player gives you a potion and says Here, drink this, then you can just look at the item and be like, Uh no it's clearly a Potion of Poison, ya goof. But, if your game has food, and makes eating food a good thing, then your game can allow enchanted food to appear as not enchanted, or have other tricks that make it harder to tell exactly what enchantments a food item has. Then, players will have to build up trust and not rely on the game to tell them everything. Also, enchanted foods can fit well into your game's story better than potions usually can.

Q: What did the Evil Queen give to Snow White?
A: Not a potion!

Why else are enchanted foods fun? It's MAGIC FOOD! There are so many more creative possibilities here than for potions. Well, it's also not as common, so it makes the game more unique. So, your game's players won't experience yet another potion system.

Of course, enchanted foods and potions are not mutually exclusive. You can have normal food too. The in-game item hierarchy would probably go something like this:
Normal food < Enchanted Food < Potions < Really Good™ Enchanted Food.

Q: What did the Evil Queen give to Snow White?
A: An Enchanted Apple!

Let's put the fun back in food.

Written on 2022.09.02.