Beginning with the foundations of the game, clicking and dragging objects around the screen is a vital gameplay functionality to add to a management-style game because it adds the ability to customize and personalize the environment.

There are two basic categories for clicking and dragging:

• the container
• the items within the container

Like preparing a lunch to bring to work or school, you have two groups: the food and the lunchbox. When you want to move around all of the food at the same time, you put the food in the lunchbox and you move around the lunchbox.

Applying the above concept using basic shapes where we use the white shapes in the below video represents containers, and the orange and teal shapes represent objects that belong to the white square looks like the following:

Expanding on the idea of containers and objects, the objects would be the furniture, and the container in this game would be the restaurant map holding the furniture.

For example, the video below shows a peach-coloured background of the game map with basic coloured shapes which represent the furniture of the game. The map here is just a big square with moveable objects inside. Switching between selecting and dragging the map or the furniture is actioned by clicking on a temporary placeholder button.

Finally, just to see a small glimpse of what it would like like if we were to replace the coloured shapes with some real table and floor assets made by the talented artist Erika, we get:

However for now I will be sticking to basic shapes for testing purposes until further down the line in the project.

Down the line, to add more personalization and customization to the restaurant management game, the click and drag functionality in Bon Appawtit! will apply to other types of furniture and game objects such as chairs, tablecloths, meals, maybe patrons (?), and so on.