I first played Fresh Frost at night for a few hours before going to bed. I slept and dreamed of a donut. The next morning I woke up and immediately went out to buy a dozen. The idea of a warm, neat, colorful and sweet donut didn’t come to my mind.
Basically, Fresh Frosted sounds like a machine, not a donut. This is a puzzle game where you lay a conveyor belt truck that carries donuts from point A to point B. Along the way, you can pass through machines that apply frosting, sprinkles, whipped cream, and cherry toppings in that order. Each level requires a certain amount of donuts with a particular topping. So you may want plain, 2 frosts and 1 whipped cream, but you need to apply frosting and sprinkles before adding the whipped cream. Puzzles are getting more complicated, with topping stations, tricks like merging conveyor belts, and of course donuts. When you describe it that way, it all sounds very mechanical.
But actually play Fresh frost is nothing. Its intricate conveyor belt is set on a pastel cloud wallpaper that slowly drifts as you organize your donuts. The donuts themselves are all frosted in an orderly manner with a calm, rhythmic machine to the gentle soundtrack beats that intensify at the start of the factory, with gentle bop-bop-bop toppings, while thinking about the next move. Will be quiet. Each level introduces a relaxing narration that encourages players, philosophically waxes life, and, of course, imagines more and more donuts. The donut machine is a component of the speaker’s mind (according to the introduction of Light Story), but a few minutes after massaging the brain with donuts, music and colors, the donuts can also be my own dream-like thought experiment. I felt that.
The magical donut factory of Fresh Frost was, strangely, devised on the train. Ally O. Taylor and Ty Taylor say the idea was born during TrainJam 2019, based on Ally O. Taylor’s interest in creating quick “detours” and “adorable donut games.” Together with programmer Amanda End, they put together the first playable version of Freshly Frosted in about four days of a trip from Chicago to San Francisco. Despite this short time in the oven, the Fresh Frosted version from TrainJame is “very easy to play,” according to Ty Taylor, and is more complex, not visible until quite late in the final. It contained a lot of mechanisms. version.
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At that time, Train Jam exhibited a booth at GDC to showcase the games played during that year’s cross-country journey. The feedback the team received from the players who checked Freshly Frosted encouraged them to “do their best” in development. One of the key factors that has been significantly embodied since the launch of Train Jam is the huge number of puzzles. From one box of dozen puzzles, to appropriate, one box of one dozen puzzles each. Ty Taylor, who designed most of these conveyor belt puzzles, admits that designing puzzles can be quite difficult, especially given the particular emotions you want to convey with a fresh frost donut machine.
“Early, we wanted to be happy with one of Freshly Frosted’s core tenants,” he says. “We wanted to be happy to see and happy to solve. We also wanted to be happy to see first, so all ovens and delivery counters and stations are pretty symmetrical. It looks confusing, whether it’s arranged in an interesting pattern, but in the end it’s the only solution where everything works properly. “
Whenever he gets stuck, Ty Taylor says he randomly places the start, end, and decorations of the donut and “twiddles things around” before trying to solve it. Normally, these random placements are not possible. However, they helped him come up with different ideas for interesting kinds of solutions, allowing him to reorganize random pieces into functional and creative puzzles.
“I literally had the idea of a shower where I invented the level,” he adds later. “My shower tiles are grid and come in many different colors, so I just stood there in the hot water and imagined a donut factory in the shower.”
Another recent development of Freshly Frosted was the addition of a light story completely written by Ally O. Taylor. He says he has incorporated his personal history into donuts and studied many “doughnut facts.” They tell me that some of these donut facts turned out to be humorously controversial for streamers playing Fresh Frost.
“Automated donut making, or donut factories, are older than sliced bread,” they say. “And if you want to be technical about it, it’s true that cutting bread with a knife is actually older than an automated factory, but automated bread cutting is better than automated donut making. I’m young. “
In addition to writing, Allie O. Taylor undertook all the voices played for Fresh Frost. They say that working on both was heavily influenced by sleep meditation apps such as frequently used headspace.
“I really wanted it to be meditative and a little bit about mental health, but I wasn’t positive about mental health,” they say. “It doesn’t really serve the purpose of meditation because I didn’t want to do too much about it. Going too deep doesn’t make me feel better. Instead, I might feel sick. Hmm. That’s why I wanted to keep it comfortable. “
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In addition to all the other satisfying meditative elements, there is a Freshly Frosted soundtrack by Josie Brechner. This seamlessly transitions between what Ally O. Taylor describes as a “lofi beat for making donuts” while the player is working on the puzzle. When the puzzle is completed and the factory is activated, it is called a “doughnut dance party”. Brechner also listens to satisfying sounds, such as the little pops you hear when you place a conveyor belt, and the mechanical rhythmic Bop Bop Bop that perfectly synchronizes with the music as the factory stirs the donuts after the donuts. I designed the sound effect of frost.
With the release of Fresh Frost, the team is happy with the reception and their work so far. They took years and mostly worked full-time on other projects, but the slow pace meant they could release a “nice finished game” without crunching and burning out. about it. A neat, complete, decorated donut box.
“I think the important thing about Fresh Frosted is that you can see what you’re working on,” says Ally O. Taylor. “I’m getting a very sweet and light, very cute and healthy game. And it probably makes a little more sense than you would expect when you first saw it, but not so much. You can also turn off narrative in the settings if you don’t need that meaning. So people aren’t surprised to play it. People who buy it know what they’re in. I know and they love it.
“… I poured a lot of myself into it because it’s my art, my writing, and my voice all the time with you. And many voice lines are my personality. Many of me are there. So whenever people say they like it, I’m like, “Oh, they like me.” I’m very happy that they liked me. “
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN.She can be found on twitter @duckvalentine..
