Want to build your own game? Fontys students develop Rats in the Kitchen
At Fontys ICT, Game Production students don’t just learn how games work; they create one themselves.Rats in the Kitchen is a prime example of this: a fully developed co-op project that began as a course assignment and has since grown into a serious indie game backed by its own studio.
Rats in the Kitchen is a 4-player co-op party game in which players move through a huge kitchen as tiny rats. Instead of a flat worktop, the game revolves around vertical gameplay: climbing, swinging, jumping and throwing ingredients around the room whilst trying to cook dishes together. The kitchen thus becomes a three-dimensional play area full of chaos and improvisation.
The game capitalises on the popularity of co-op titles such as Overcooked and Lethal Company, but adds something rarely seen in the genre: platforming and physics-based traversal. By shrinking players down to the size of rats, a unique scale and a new way of playing are created.
Results
The team has now built a stable, playable prototype. The biggest technical challenge: 4-player networked physics. It works reliably and delivers exactly the frantic action they were aiming for. The game has also been well received by professionals from Guerrilla Games, Nixxes and Poki, among others.
The team
Behind the project is Wild Grove Studios, a team of five students from Fontys ICT. What began as a student project is now developing into a fully-fledged indie game with a public demo in development.
Author: Suzette van Deelen
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