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Positioning
A short, sharp, screenshot-shaped game in a market that has run out of short games.
The shelf it sits on
| Genre | Asymmetric two-player comedy / cooking sandbox |
| Session | 6–15 minutes. Complete, finite, rewarding to stop. |
| Platform | Browser first (desktop and mobile). Capacitor wrappers for Android and iOS already build. |
| Price | Free to play, free to run. |
| Scale | Micro-game. One kitchen, one loop, no roadmap. |
Comparable work
- Overcooked — symmetric co-op, logistics as antagonist. We share the kitchen and share nothing else.
- Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes — the closest structural relative: asymmetric information, two players who cannot see each other's half. It builds tension; we build embarrassment.
- Untitled Goose Game, Frog Detective — Australian deadpan, small scope, enormous voice. The proof that tone travels further than budget.
- Apple Cabin Foods (web comedy) — not a game, but the tonal north star: a franchise presented with total sincerity by someone who has never eaten food.
- Cooking Simulator, PlateUp! — simulation-forward. We are not simulating a kitchen; we are simulating a misunderstanding.
The gap we are in
Everything asymmetric-and-funny requires two things we removed: an install, and a purchase. Keep Talking needs a manual and a headset. Overcooked needs two copies or one couch. There is currently no funny asymmetric two-player game that a stranger can be in within ninety seconds of receiving a link — which is exactly the distribution shape that the format needs.
Why it travels
- The link is the product. Nothing to install means the acquisition loop is one message in a group chat.
- The specials board is free marketing. A machine that cannot tell dessert from chowder generates a new absurd name every day; those names are screenshots, and screenshots are the only marketing budget a micro-game has.
- The scatter is a clip. A second and a half of physics throwing somebody's dinner at the ceiling is the exact length of a short-form video.
- Two players means two audiences. Every session recruits a person who was not looking for a game.
- It is Australian without a single kangaroo. The voice is dry, unimpressed, anti-heroic and suspicious of management — recognisably ours, and it reads as funny rather than as national branding.
Distribution plan
| Channel | Why |
|---|---|
| Web, direct link | The whole design. Instant, free, no store gatekeeping. |
| itch.io | Where micro-games are browsed on purpose, and where a web build is a first-class citizen. |
| Android / iOS via Capacitor | Already builds. Ships after the web release, not instead of it. |
| Short-form video and small streamers | Two-screen asymmetry is inherently watchable; the scatter and the board supply the clips. |
| Australian games showcases and local events | Playable in a browser on a borrowed laptop, which makes it the easiest thing in the room to demo. |
Success, defined honestly
Not revenue. A micro-game funded at this scale succeeds if it is finished, played, and useful to the people who made it:
- Finished and public, playing on a phone, at $0/month running cost
- Played by strangers — not just friends of the team — in the always-open public room
- Clipped by people we have never met
- Documented: the zero-backend, zero-account multiplayer architecture published openly so the next Australian micro-game does not have to solve it again
- A door opened: a portfolio piece with a live URL that can be handed to a festival, a publisher or a hiring studio without asking anyone to install anything