Monsters. A mainstay in video games since the very inception of the medium. Gamers have fought and tamed monsters throughout thousands of video games. Not many games, however, give gamers the opportunity to cook and serve them up in delicious meals.
Midwest 90: Rapid City is an ambitious Malaysian-developed indie game that marries the restaurant tycoon genre with tower defence, tying it all up with a strong narrative.
You play as the proprietor of a midwestern American diner in a small town beset by monsters. Kesh Ganasparan, the founder of developer Hidden Chest Studios and Midwest 90’s game director, described the game as “50% restaurant management, 30% narrative, and 20% tower defence”.
The core gameplay loop takes the form of having to set traps to stop the monsters from attacking the restaurant. The slain monsters can then be harvested for ingredients to create dishes that you research and sell. Throughout the game, you will also have to make difficult business decisions that impact your survival, your restaurant, and maybe even the city itself.
A mix of influences
Kesh cited several inspirations that led to the development of this unique game, such as Stranger Things, Fallout, and Frostpunk.
“Those were the main references, but a lot of other things went into the making of this game, such as the experience of playing the first XCOM so many years ago in 1993,” he says. “Basically you build a base, and you go out and you fight these aliens. But I never expected the aliens would come to attack your base. When that happened, it blew my mind. That kinda stuck with me.”
From an aesthetic point of view, Midwest 90’s visual DNA is noticeably influenced by Fallout. Kesh says, “I love the world Fallout has created. It’s very, very unique. It’s not just post-apocalyptic, it’s post-apocalyptic with that 50’s, 60’s twist. It’s not only just that, for example, in Fallout 2, you could go to places, and you’d see an alien or you could see a giant Godzilla footprint, or come across Mad Max in the game. They didn’t just want to be completely serious, they wanted to have fun also.”
Kesh also cites Stranger Things’ nostalgia factor. “When it first came out it felt like an 80’s show. Interdimensional monsters chasing kids around. It’s got that Stephen Spielberg feel to it, and I really like that. The small town factor as well, how that small town is dealing with this problem of interdimensional monsters. I prefer the smaller, more close-knit things.”
In terms of gameplay, Frostpunk helped shape Midwest 90 to no small degree. Kesh says, “Frostpunk is a city builder. But what it does differently is that it makes your decisions very, very impactful. You have to control how many people come to your city; if there are too many, then you won’t have enough food for them.
“You’re given these very difficult decisions to make. Do you want to make your people work longer hours so you’d have more food? Or put wood chips in their food to make them get full faster? That’s the kind of thing I wanted to do with Midwest 90.
“You can be this horrible restaurant manager, or you can be a good guy. Your business decisions, as well, have an impact on the reputation of the restaurant,” he adds.
The distillation of what makes all these properties great makes Midwest 90 a truly unique game. There is yet one more inspiration that may come as a surprise: a restaurant known as Betty’s Midwest Kitchen.
“We actually have a restaurant consultant,” Kesh explains. “His name is Kevin, and his restaurant is the inspiration for our game. I used to go there at night after work and have a burger. One day, I was looking out the window and was thinking, ‘What happens if monsters start attacking the restaurant?’”
From then on, Kesh took the idea and ran with it. He started learning more about the Midwest states of America. Then he found Rapid City.
“It’s a gold rush city near the Black Hills,” Kesh says. “It was a Native American land. The white Americans had an agreement with them to not take their territory. But once they found gold there, they took over the place and had the biggest gold mine in North America for a long time. There’s so much conflict and history there, so I thought that’s the place I wanted to start my story in. It’s got this very strong Americana feel to it too.”
Winning recipe
PY Tan is the artist behind Midwest 90’s stunning artwork. He was originally commissioned to do a single piece of art depicting the chef chopping up monster meat. Once he did that, Kesh was so impressed that he decided the entire project would follow Tan’s art style.
“He still works with us on the project, doing character art and such,” Kesh says.
While the idea of the characters and narrative came from Kesh, he attributes the story and writing to his close friend Shern Chong, who writes scripts for movies and television shows. “He was absolutely vital in establishing the characters and how we wrote those characters.”
The unique nature of this game was a challenge to the developers. Despite the many influences, there was no real precedent for a hybrid restaurant management/tower defence game, and Kesh’s team had to go through a lot of trial and error. The tutorial took them several years to get right. “We had to make sure that people could get in and play the game with no issues at all”.
In playtests, feedback was usually positive, often praising the humour, artwork, and characters. “The characters feel real, people related with those characters quite a bit,” Kesh says. “And even though the art for the food was like giant monster eyeballs, people were wowed. Once you unlocked the dish and it is revealed, we’ve seen some YouTubers' faces go like ‘oooh!’
“People like how the game feels very unique and also familiar at the same time. I wanted the game to feel like games from the late 90’s and early 2000’s. I think people could also see how much love we’ve put into the game. We’ve been working on it for almost five years.”
After going through many iterations, by October 2024, the team had a Halloween playtest and finally figured it out. “Now we have a good gameplay loop!” Kesh says. “Once we had found that, we’d be able to concentrate on building the rest of the game and move faster.”
The developer of Midwest 90, Hidden Chest Studios, is (at the time of writing) a beneficiary of an MDEC grant, allowing them to really kick development into high gear.
His advice to other game developers? “One of the most important pieces of advice I have is to have friends in the industry. You can learn from their experiences as well,” Kesh adds.
Kesh urges those new to the industry to not be shy about showing their prototypes to more experienced developers, and to not worry about people stealing their ideas. “The idea is not important, it’s how you execute the idea. In order to make an idea work well, you have to go out there and show other developers.”
