One of the latest games produced through Fitchburg State’s Game Studio course, “Inter-Dine-Mensional,” brings a fresh new take on the average visual novel, providing players with riveting characters to interact with and deceivingly tough minigames to complete. Within just a few hours of gameplay, “Inter-Dine-Mensional” has become a personal favorite of mine.

Players enter the point of view of one Graciana, a mild-mannered waitress for the out-of-this-world O’Ryan’s Diner. The game brings a savory sci-fi flavor to the visual novel genre, playing around with guests ranging from mechanically-enhanced humans to living stars. Graciana’s job is to entertain these patrons, and each conversation can have a major impact on the game’s ending, as well as each character’s well-being.

“We kinda have a lore Bible, and typed out a whole different bunch of aspects on each patron’s personality, and what their deal is, like how we want their conversations to go,” stated the game’s producer Soleanna Pannuto, a senior Game Design major at Fitchburg State.

Some of these conversations included explaining human concepts like depression to eldritch deities taking an ingenious way of covering difficult topics in an otherwise bright and colorful environment.

Between conversations with patrons, the game has you create burgers out of various ingredients by catching falling food on a plate, as well as taking out the trash. Despite the easy look of the minigame, I found myself struggling to keep up as the game progressed, adding a layer of difficulty and unpredictability to the experience. The trash minigame was especially difficult, as new elements were routinely introduced to make these tasks more treacherous. These minigames flesh out the gameplay, providing additional challenge and variety as the player makes their way through the game’s central story.

A restaurant is a versatile place to put a visual novel, especially when a team is constrained to a single semester with the expectation of creating a full launch of their game. When discussing the aspect of narrative-focused games and especially visual novels, Pannuto mentioned that finding the right balance between detail and deadlines was no easy feat.

“I feel it’s hard to do a narrative game [in Game classes] due to the short time period.” said Pannuto.

The natural environment of a restaurant implies quick exchanges between server and customer and allowed for Soleanna and her team to fit in highly thought-out conversations through the use of shorter language and condensing thoughts into digestible chunks fitting for a quick chat. The setting and format seem to work hand-in-hand, showing proper problem-solving and love for the game they created.

When asked for advice on how to handle an assignment as daunting as releasing a full game in one semester, Pannuto put plenty of emphasis on making game design not just your schoolwork, but also your passion. Her main focus was to “…practice and push for what you like. If you really want to do level design, practice it outside of class. Try and do side projects.” Her practice-makes-perfect approach to game design lines up with many other passions or hobbies, work related or not. No one can improve a skill without engaging in the activity, and the results achieved in “Inter-Dine-Mensional” demonstrate that Game Design is no different.

If you want to play “Inter-Dine-Mensional”, the game can be downloaded on Windows for free at https://pann14.itch.io/interdinemensional.