Food & Evil: Guy Fieri, Clowns, and One Jacked Elk

Art and Humor Blended

It’s not every day you come across something so weird and wondrous as Worthikids’ art. Starting in a flat medium, once Ian Worthington (Worthikids on YouTube) came out with their 3-D animation for Big Top Burger, my brain changed. To take something smudgy and pastel (and presumably flat) and turn it into 3-Dimensional renders takes a whole lot of work, and none of it goes unappreciated. For those not in the know, Big Top Burger is an animation about Steve, a strange interdimensional clown running a food truck staffed by seemingly unknowing normal humans. It answers the question: “What if the clown from IT gave up being scary and decided to run a food truck?” I remember the first animation coming out over 5 years ago and I still quote it with my friends today.

Getting Fiery

Food & Evil was born from the mood of Big Top Burger. Instead of a food truck full of humans, however, they’re all full of Steves. But Steve is never seen actually cooking, just reproducing burgers like a sponge. So who else do we know who has a signature wild energy and also cooks? Guy Fieri. When first coming up with Food and Evil, Guy Fieri was a hot topic at the time, with my friends streaming a good amount of “Guy Fieri’s Bisexuals."

Consulting the Venn diagram of interdimensional mischief and strong personalities, the only logical center was: demons. But, ya know, the silly ones. This game isn’t my take on belief systems, Good and Evil, or whatever negative connotations you want to give demons. It’s about creating an easily recognizable character. When you think of a demon, you think of their mischievous acts. I want players to be excited to play a crew of rambunctious Guy Fieri’s running around the map and maybe getting the job done.

Making it “Hot and Fast”

I didn’t initially set out to promote a new game system. After playtesting Food and Evil a few times, however, I started to notice how quickly it was to throw a game together. All I had to do was hand players their character sheet, deal out some cards, and we started right into playing the game. The magic of the Flip System: You only need to explain a rule right when players need it. That means you don’t have to sit there as I list out a bunch of rules and restrictions you need to keep in mind before you make a move. I ask you what you want to do, you respond with an action, I say the suit, you flip a card, we resolve the result.

Having a card based system makes gameplay interesting in multiple ways: 

1. It is for certain you will always have a successful action (and a failure) 

2. The suits provide story progression, no matter the positive or negative outcome 

No matter the number, if you match the suit you’ll receive an ingredient that will get you closer to completing the adventure. This means failure never feels completely bad. If players catch on, they’ll start to keep track of what they already flipped, allowing them control and shape the story in a certain way, almost like foresight. 

The more we playtested Food & Evil, the more we realized one more thing: This game generates a lot of puns. Like, A LOT. To encourage the silly, joking behavior and to have some control over random card outcomes, we made it a rule to give players a bonus point on their next flip if they said a pun or did something creative in the scene.

Having it "To-Go"

Much like Big Top Burger is seen in many locations, I wanted your food truck in Food and Evil to travel. By creating such a light and breezy system, Food and Evil can easily be played in any setting, including your current D&D campaign. You can use your own characters instead of demons as your adventurers and go on whimsical journeys. While Food and Evil will include more than 10 adventures, I don’t want the book to be sitting on your shelf waiting for you to finish your 2-year campaign before playing it. This game is malleable and fits in any space it needs, much like Steve and their amorphous body. 

Going along with the travel theme, there is also a Food and Evil “Deluxe To-Go Box,” which features the book, rip-off player sheets, 54 card deck, a takeout menu of food spells, tokens to keep track of bonuses, and a cardboard set of wheels to display the box so it looks like tasty eye candy while sitting on your shelf. This is perhaps my favorite product I’m bringing out into the world, so I really hope you send some support. You can support the project on Backerkit here.

Thanks for reading and stay crispy out there!