Notes From Province features a cooking system where players can collect ingredients and create dishes that permanently boost their stats.



It serves as a more flavorful way of letting players customize and tweak their character builds.

Except it was frustrating, poor game design that players disengaged with. While having friends test the game, people fell into two groups: frustrated by cooking, or ignored it. The first group happily cooked food and fed it to their party, and all was good, until they unlocked a new party member or ability that made the earlier, permanent food choice a sub-optimal decision. Why would you give the health boosting apple pie to the priest, when the HP sacrificing necromancer is clearly the better choice?

The second group, more experienced gamers, predicted the first situation and hoarded their food, waiting for a future moment where they had perfect knowledge of which character should eat what. Just like hoarding potions for "when you really need them", that moment never came and the food went uneaten.

Enter the Questionable Diet Pills.



The diet pills can be purchased from the local general store, and when consumed by a party member, refund all the food they have eaten. Players can no longer be stuck with sub-optimal food distribution, so go out and eat without fear.