Smell that? Something delicious is wafting out of the game studio. And no, I’m not talking about Gene’s delicious buns.
I’m talking Cookie Haus! Our latest cozy-ish drawing game is available now in The Jackbox Party Pack 11! Get ready to grab some friends and frost some whacky cookies for some even whackier customers.
We spoke to the devs that made the game about how they came up with the idea and what’s the deal with all those sprinkles!
Please introduce yourself and your role on Cookie Haus.
I’m Andy, and I was the Audio Lead and Product Owner for Cookie Haus. - Andy Poland
I’m Liz, and I was the Editorial Lead and a writer for Cookie Haus! - Liz
I’m Chase. I am the director and jackbox.tv engineer on Cookie Haus. - Chase McClure
How did you come up with the idea for Cookie Haus?
The core idea of Cookie Haus originates from a classic drawing game I would play with my dad, where one person draws a shape and the other person turns it into something else. When I played as a kid, 90% of the time I’d turn the shape into some type of rocket ship. I still do. That mechanic lent itself perfectly to decorating cookies, so it was an obvious direction. - Chase
Do you have any fun stories from making Cookie Haus?
One of the hardest parts of every dev cycle is trying to name the damn game. Somehow, naming Cookie Haus was so easy. Then there was a lengthy, company-wide debate on whether there should be umlauts, and I'm afraid we broke some hearts by not having any. That just isn't how German works! - Chase
What was one challenge you had to overcome during production?
The drawing tools for Cookie Haus are brand new, and they came with a lot of really fun tech challenges to make them look delish. My favorite was getting a layer of icing on top of sprinkles looking perfectly bumpy. It took a while, but it was totally worth it. - Chase
Because of the way our game loop is structured, we only burn through 4 prompts per game. While efficient, this kinda gets in the way of our ability to playtest a lot of content in the digital version. Editorial often needs high-volume playtests not just to see how individual prompts play, but in order to make broad observations about content under a deadline. So what was the fix? Coloring. For-real, crayon-ass coloring. Once a week I ran a papertest in the office with printouts of cookie shapes and drawing implements, and whoever wanted to stop by would come and plow through 10-15 prompts with me. It was a nice way to spend a lunch hour and we learned SO quickly what worked and what didn’t. I can’t thank my coloring crew enough for their work! - Liz
What were you inspired by while designing the look and music for Cookie Haus?
Because we wanted the game to have a cozy feel to it, I played a lot of cozy games to just get their general vibe. Luckily, I already tend to make “beep-boop” kind of music, so I didn’t have to venture too far outside of that musical realm. I also wanted the rhythms to be based on early drum machines like the Ace-Tone and oddball instruments like the Omnichord. Then there’s the French-vibe of the lobby music. I just kind of mashed it all together and out came Cookie Haus. - Andy
It's always helpful for me to create details and elaborate backstories for the projects I work on. The team decided pretty early that we wanted the game to have a cozy, hyggelike vibe. That reminded me of a very specific place in the Bavarian tourist town of Helen, Georgia. So I think Cookie Haus might be there? - Chase
What is your favorite part of Cookie Haus?
Of course I love everything about Cookie Haus but it was a lot of fun creating the gibberish voices for the customers. We recorded a ton of people speaking gibberish and then I cut it all up and threw it into FMOD with a bunch of filters and pitch shifting on them. Some of them are really cute and others are downright disturbing. They’re so stupid, which is why I love them. - Andy
I love Cookie Haus’s joke density. Our writer’s room is full of really talented comedians, but it’s actually pretty rare for them to get the chance to just write plain ‘ol jokes. I was so excited to let them run wild on our characters and host. They really really rose to the challenge, injecting a lot of personality and satirical ideas into this game, and making Moonique specifically into a character that some people have called one of their favorite Jackbox hosts. (She’s a stone-cold weirdo and I love her.) Cookie Haus has a very strong POV and it’s 100% due to the writers. - Liz
Any fun glitches or unexpected gameplay moments that happened during production and testing?
One of my favorite playtests this year was the first time we had the sprinkle system in place for the wider company to see. Right before we played, we also made a change to the resolution of the cookies, but I forgot to adjust the sprinkles sprites. So they were 4 times larger than they were supposed to be. - Chase
What has been your favorite memory of making Cookie Haus?
I think the first time I saw how unbelievably yummy the cookies looked, with all the frosting and the sprinkles, it made me want to go buy some cookies like that minute. That’s when I felt the game really had potential. - Andy
The first editorial note I ever got about this game was after our first milestone - mind you, first note about ANY editorial at that point - was a member of our exec team asking what a “fursona” was. I will cherish that memory for the rest of my career. - Liz