Hot Pot Panic is a game where you’ve been invited out to eat, but you want to focus on filling your face and forget about conversation.
Well, when someone else is treating you, you’ll have to be a perfect guest to be invited back again!
The game, which was in itch.io’s Racial Justice & Equality Bundle, has you moving between being master of the hot pot and keeping the conversation flowing. As your friend talks, you need to look up to make eye contact and see what they are saying. These little stories have different details that need to be heard, but at the same time, you need to keep looking down and adjusting the hot pot – adding in different foods, eating the ones that are cooked, and ordering more food once you have eaten what was in front of you.
After a while, your friend will ask you a question. You’ll have three answers to choose from to keep the conversation going, and she will know if you weren’t listening and just picked something at random. You don’t want her to get mad at you, but paying too much attention to the conversation will result in food being ignored and it can burn. Your overall goal is to keep her happy while filling up your stomach with perfectly cooked food.
If you succeed, she will bring you to the next restaurant and continue. The stories that she tells, most of which are prompted by you talking, do follow from dinner to dinner, building on themselves if you are actually interested. Her mother starts understanding technology, there is a learning arch in the stories about her co-worker. She may not be one to eat tons or manage a hot pot, but she is full of conversation!
I really like Hot Pot Panic, despite it being quite a short experience of just three levels. The responses and conversation did get a bit more challenging as time went on. And the food itself looked delicious!
Hot Pot Panic is available now on itch.io.
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