Over the next several weeks, we’re spotlighting the top 20 3D Jam experiences chosen by the jury and community votes. These spotlights will focus on game design, interaction design, and the big ideas driving our community forward.

Let’s Make Fried Rice puts you in the shoes of a short order cook. Using tool tracking, grab your pan, extract ingredients, and churn out plates of hot fried rice as fast as your customers can order them. Download the desktop version for Mac and Windows, or the Rift version for Windows.

What was your process in designing the food physics?

At the very beginning, we tried making it realistic, but the realistic formula was acting too tight. This was almost uncontrollable, as the rice dropped too quickly and the player almost couldn’t keep rice in the pan. After this observation, we reduced the gravity to one-third of the realistic value. Things worked more slowly, but that seemed much comfortable for our test players.

On the other hand, we tweaked the sensitivity of the Leap Motion Unity asset’s HandController 3 times its original value. This tweak aimed to keep players’ hands inside the Leap Motion tracking range. Before we did this, players tended to move their hands outside the sensing area, and that caused a poor game experience.

Cooking games are a very popular casual gaming genre. What does motion control add to the mixture?

Using a gamepad requires some gaming ability for the player, but motion control may work easier (as well as touch controls on smartphones and tablets). To make more casual games for a wider audience, motion control is a great option. What I love about Leap Motion is that it doesn’t require too much physical space.

Tool tracking is a little-used mechanic in Leap Motion gaming. Why did you decide to take it in that direction?

The reason is simple – tool tracking is much more natural for operating a frypan. I can imagine this also works well for other cooking tools that have straight handles. Human beings have already invented the best input method for pan cooking games. If we were to use different types of tools, I would want to add a spatula for the other hand.

Let’s Make Fried Rice was created by Yusuke Ando (lead programmer) and Hitoshi Nakagawa (UI and score system programmer). Follow them on Twitter!

Alex Colgan

Alex Colgan is the senior director of marketing and developer community at Leap Motion. By transforming how we interact with technology, he believes we can make our world feel more human.