Eating is Over
Eating is Over
Back to topThe first time I saw Nour, the upcoming food simulation game by indie developer Tj Hughes, all I could see was a storm of rainbow-colored sprinkles bouncing off of three scoops of ice cream large enough to fill a pink clawfoot tub. At a conference in Portland that took place last fall, St. Louis-based Hughes was invited to preview the game for attendees. Engaging with the game without any directives, points, or plotlines, players mashed buttons on a controller to prompt random changes to photorealistic setpieces: tapioca pearls ricocheted off of a cup of milk tea, a grid of glittering toasters erupted with toasted slices of sandwich bread, and perfectly chubby and browned pancakes appeared from thin air to topple into a glorious mess.
Operating as a solo developer under the pseudonym of Terrifying Jellyfish, Hughes already has two games under his belt that are just as straightforward as Nour. On his website, Hughes writes, “Terrifying Jellyfish is bent on escaping the mediocre and mundane forever through the exorbitant use of color, playfulness, and a e s t h e t i c s.” By combining his love for pastels and neon with a loving attentiveness to detail, Hughes transports the player to a place outside of reality, where eating your meal is far from the point of it.
At the tail end of 2018, I contacted Hughes via Skype to talk about the artistic inspiration for his project, the appeal of softness, and what we, as eaters and gamers, might learn from a small infusion of culinary chaos.

Tell me how the idea for Nour hatched.
Nour came from a combination of a few different things. First off was me actually having a nice bowl of ramen for the first time and being blown away by all the different elements that were inside of that bowl. There were so many different textures, different flavors, and I thought there was something fun and playful about that. I feel like that’s what makes you play with your food: when you’re just interested in what’s being presented in front of you, when you’re just looking at it from a truly aesthetic viewpoint.

Another inspiration was anime food. Food in Japanese anime is always so lovingly rendered, to a point where it just makes you hungry: the colors, the textures. I just always really appreciated that, and it’s almost like a whole other genre of animation. So I just wanted to know, is this possible to do in 3D? Can you make someone hungry using 3D graphics, colors, textures, gradients?
So you mentioned anime food—what kind of works did you watch? What created those feelings in you?
Oh, Studio Ghibli for sure! If anyone has seen the ramen scene in my game, folks will usually notice that the ham in the bowl is very much inspired by Ponyo. Any food that Studio Ghibli renders is done with so much love… and games could also do that. Food is our source of sustenance and I know it’s often used as health replenishment in games, but I think it’s so much more than just nourishment. A lot of memory and a lot of meaning go into it as well.
As far as my work goes though, there’s no plot to my game or anything. I feel like the love comes through in the fidelity the food’s rendered in. I try hard to make all of the food in the game look really good and really delicious. Even if I’m sacrificing realism—a lot of the food is realistic, but I’ll take liberties here and there just to convey flavors and make it appealing—I just think that that’s where I can inject a little personality into it.
So in your mind, what makes a dish look really appealing? When it comes to your personal aesthetics, what do you look for?
This is a complex one, because this is what the entire game is trying to solve—that is, what makes something look good even if it’s just pixels on a screen? I find that it’s a lot more than just the color alone. Like the shininess: can you see light glisten off the surface of that piece of meat? If it were just dull, it would probably just look like it’s been sitting out at room temperature. There’s so much more to it, like how light interacts with it, or how you can see steam coming off of it. That’s a little touch I put in the ramen scene that a lot of people notice is the threshold: that’s when it makes them hungry. They just notice that really small detail.

Is there a dish or ingredient that you were really looking forward to rendering or that you just especially enjoyed making?
The bubble tea scene was one I was super excited about. One because bubble tea is such a colorful drink. On the surface, the aesthetic qualities are just off the charts! To have the little tapioca balls contrast with the bright pastels of the drink—pink for fruit or purple for taro—I think it’s the most colorful drink. I was so excited to try and render that. It was a very good test of my skills, too, because trying to make milkiness in 3D takes a special technique to be able to do that and have it look like food and not some foggy piece of geometry. It takes a lot of nuance.
Speaking of the bubble tea, I notice that you have a really strong color palette with Nour. Of course when you think of art galleries and museums for instance, they pay a lot of attention to the wall color behind a painting because of how it interacts with the art you’re supposed to focus on. Can you talk a little bit about your choices in that regard?
In the respect of art galleries putting a neutral background behind paintings and things like that, I wanted to give the same level of attention to each scene in Nour. You’ll notice in some scenes there’s just a gradient in the background, maybe from a light blue to a dark blue, or shades of red, or just a completely solid color. That’s inspired by pop art and photography where you’ll have a subject with really bright colors and composition that just focuses on one thing at the center of the frame while the rest of it is a solid color or a really simple gradient.
And also the sense of infinity that is implied by this canvas that just—you know, there are no really rough edges in your scenes outside of the food itself. It’s almost like the idea of heaven: this expanse that’s eternal and soft.
Yeah, yeah, it conveys the softness that I think we need a lot more of in 3D. We’re so fixated on rendering hard objects like steels, concretes, asphalts, things like that. Where is there room for soft breads and gums and other things like that? And that’s really what I’m trying to go for with my 3D work, to fulfill that need for coziness.

So what’s it like for you to watch people play the game for the first time?
I’ve seen a lot of people approach it in different ways, especially among different age groups. I find that kids will come up to it, start playing it, and immediately know what’s going on with it. They’ll start pressing buttons and just being so simply entertained by all the food flying around on the screen. It’s just a moment of joy.
Adults will sometimes do the same but sometimes they’ll approach it timidly and just press one button. They’re not sure what’s gonna happen and they’re not sure if they’re gonna mess something up. But once they see that, no matter what they press, there’s positive feedback, they open up and you can see their timidness melt away. It’s the most satisfying thing. They really just understand in that moment, this is about play—they can express themselves and only do what they want.
That’s really fascinating when you think about it in terms of adulthood, because when we’re adults, our relationship to food changes, too, compared to when we were kids. It gets a lot more neurotic.
Yeah, I see that too. As kids, we’ll play with our food and just be like, “Oh my gosh, the broccoli looks like trees!” We’ll notice all of these small things. And now we’re trying to optimize our diets and make sure all our food is locally sourced… we’re trying to condense our foods into the most efficient thing! We’re putting it in drinks that you can drink to replace an entire meal. I find it interesting, the different approaches to food that there are now.

When I think about your ramen, for example, I think we all dream of having the bowl that’s piled high with chashu, right? In real life you’d end up wasting it or being unable to finish it, but in this game you can actually do that and see what happens.
With Nour, I’m trying to give you the fantasy of abundance as well. There’s an endless supply and it’s OK, it’s not like there are starving children who are gonna be worse off from that. This is the one fantasy land where you can throw your food around and waste it without having to clean up the mess.
I hope that, when playing Nour, folks will feel a bit more satisfied and free to think of food in this way instead of having to just gulp it down as you rush off to work. I’m hoping it’ll provide a space for you to really sit down to look at your food and realize just how weird and awesome it is.
Per Hughes, Nour has a planned release of “sometime in 2019.”
