Kebab Van

Kebab Van is a game by me and Robbie Woodhead (shockwood). Probably one of the stupidest games I have made, most of the design we came up with while on a bike ride on a Sunday morning. The game is basically a business simulation about running a kebab van on a Saturday night while the pubs/ nightclubs are running.

So you have to order stock, decide what you put in your kebabs and also what price you will sell them at. The demand for kebabs during the evening is determined by how drunk the customers are and what you have put in. The whole game design is a bit pointless to say the least as its always the same every day as the drunker they are the more chillies they want and the more they’ll pay for the kebab’s. So its pretty much an entirely realistic simulation of running a kebab van.

We also as an experiment converted the game into Chinese, which was probably a completely idiotic idea as obviously in china they don’t have Kebab Vans or binge drinking (I think, it may have been exported to China if you are reading this in the future). Surprisingly it does seem very popular in china, my friend Jaiwen did all the translation and as I can’t speak Chinese I have no idea if it actually makes any sense at all, especially after spending a rather long time explaining what a “pavement pizza” was.

Stunningly the game has been played 17 million times the last time I looked since launch, (stats as of August 2010). Since doing the game we were contacted by Mousebreaker which is why we ended up making a few simulation games for them along similar lines (racehorse tycoon and grand prix tycoon).