NO hungry , bar?

I would really like to see a hunger system that actually added immersion to the game, but it seems that every example of hunger in a video game has that negative, repetitive quality to it. It seems to me that almost every video game that has food incorporated into it falls into two categories: unnecessary, or repetitive. It could be the very nature of hunger mechanics to feel like repetition which could be why almost all video games fail to create a unique hunger system. But if you make an incredibly immersive hunger system that adds a lot of gameplay onto the game then someone could argue that it will detract from the rest of the desirable gameplay if a person disliked the hunger mechanic.

That being said I believe the perfect hunger mechanic would be one that adds into the gameplay instead of being more of an augment to it. Like a minigame involving hunting, where food isn't readily accessible in any other location, or at the very least food quality would be incredibly poor (IE a slab of cooked meat). What if hunger was to take the form of a cooking minigame? A minigame where the food you produce is based on both the amount of skill you have combined with quality of ingredients (Optional). For example, if you have played Pokemon RSE then you probably remember the pokeblock blender. I had a lot of fun as a kid playing that game even though it was an incredibly simple concept, you could have higher quality pokeblocks based on how good your reflexes were combined with a knowledge of the ingredients you added into the blender.

 

Not that it's groundbreaking or anything, but i like what hunger does for Minecraft...at least compared to most other games that have hunger.

 

I was going to use minecraft as an example, but it's one of those mechanics that's kind of on the line. It adds immersion for the first couple hours of the game, but after that it seems to be basically "Slaughter every cow in the forest and completely forget about hunger"

 

Immersion aside, I enjoy it because of the fact that it allows you to regen health, and it also doesn't completely kill you if you never eat (which goes against immersion, I know). I also like how you don't have to constantly keep eating.

 

If there is a way to keep hunger from killing off musicians during long performances and still be in the game, I'm all for it. Nothing is more agonizing than hearing 2-5 players hunger beeping and then they all die nearly at once in the middle of their performance. Only way back then that I could avoid something like that is if I had /admin powers.

 

Tbh, I absolutely love Mabinogi's hunger system, but then again they had mana and stamina - hunger would eventually cut your stamina down by half if you let it get out of hand and you'd have to eat to restore your max stamina. The cooking skill was an excellent, uncomplicated minigame of sorts and the food fed you and buffed you - better depending on the quality (1-5 stars) of the food and what type of food it was.