Inspiration
Chaos Kitchen brings the pressure, humor, and personality of dinner service to a short browser game. Founder and executive chef Franklyn Rosario wanted casual phone and desktop players to read a ticket, make a plate, and want one more shift.
What it does
Read each customer's ingredients and exclusions, add an optional flavor bonus, and serve before time runs out. Chef mode adds prep, cooking at the READY moment, and plating. A guided first plate helps new players start, while timed shifts and a fictional Chef Franklyn inspection provide extra challenges. Customer reactions, scores, and a receipt give each shift a clear ending and a replay button.
How we built it
The game uses HTML, CSS, and JavaScript modules with deterministic local rules, original SVG food art, and synthesized Web Audio. GitHub Actions runs engine, build, and browser acceptance checks; Vercel hosts the free playable build. A downloadable HTML version is self-contained. The hosted version includes Vercel Web Analytics.
AI assisted planning, coding, illustration, test generation, and critical review. The repository contains the Devpost Learn Skill Pack files and the scope, product requirements, technical specification, and app map. Our provenance note documents the recovered original archive and its matching curriculum files; an original interview transcript was not recovered. Gameplay and receipt coaching do not call a runtime AI model.
Challenges and improvements
Testing on Franklyn's iPhone exposed excessive scrolling, crowded controls, long receipt copy, and audio friction. We shortened the mobile experience, made the next action prominent, and checked replay, pause, sound switching, and selection clearing. Adversarial review also caught a recovery control that worked in the engine but was disabled in the interface; the correction has visible-control browser regression coverage.
What we learned
A passing unit test is only part of a working experience. The player must be able to reach the control, understand the next action, and recover from a mistake. Keeping the engine separate from the interface made these problems easier to isolate and test.
What's next
Observe uncoached players and refine difficulty and accessibility before considering a commercial iPhone release. This entry is a free browser proof of concept, with fictional cooking and awards, not food-safety instruction or a real restaurant rating.
Play and inspect
Play free: https://play.aizoya.com/
Functional source, planning documents, and license are on the release/chaos-star-review branch: https://github.com/aizoya/chaos-kitchen/tree/release/chaos-star-review
Feedback: [email protected]
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