Chef in a Rush
Chef in a Rush is a mixed reality cooking game for Meta Quest. Your real room becomes a kitchen where you use your hands to grill burgers, race the clock, and grow a small food stand into a busier restaurant.
What inspired me
I wanted to capture the moment in a busy kitchen when several things need your attention at once: the burger is almost done, a customer is waiting, and another order is about to arrive. Mixed reality lets me put that experience right in front of the player. You can still see your room while reaching for ingredients, checking the grill, and serving food from one spot.
I also wanted the room to have a personality of its own. The same kitchen can sit beneath a passing raincloud, serve astronauts in orbit, or have schools of fish swim past while you cook.
What it does
You start with one customer slot, one working grill spot, and burgers on the menu. Deliver a good order and you earn money. You can spend it during the same round to open another grill spot, buy a fryer, or unlock a cola machine. New equipment brings new menu items and more customers, so the kitchen gets busier as you expand it.
The game has three themes: Seasons, with changing weather and animal customers; Outer Space, with planets, stars, aliens, and astronauts; and Underwater, with fish, bubbles, and moving patterns of water light.
How I built it
I built the game in Unity with C# and Meta XR for Quest 3 and Quest 3S. I started with one complete interaction: pick up a patty, cook it, assemble a burger, and serve it. Then I added simultaneous orders, a shop that works mid-round, saved upgrades, and themed customers that react to real order outcomes.
For the underwater scene, I used room scan data to place water-light effects on multiple surfaces and give fish paths through the space around the player. The kitchen stays compact so those effects have room to be seen while you cook.
Challenges and what I learned
One early experiment placed miniature dining tables around the room. In a small room, placement rules could reject every spot, so I could finish an order and see nothing happen. My first attempt at themes had a different problem: the effects appeared on one surface and felt like a display beside the kitchen.
Those experiments changed how I judge a mixed reality feature. I ask whether I can notice it while I’m actually cooking. A fish swimming across my peripheral vision or a raincloud passing overhead can make the room feel alive without taking my eyes off the grill. I used the same lesson for progression: buying a fryer matters most when it switches on in front of you and you can use it for the next order.
