Meat Source Research

My opinion of meat in games:

Since all of my characters in the game are animals, and in the later stages my characters will involve animals like cows, sheep, and pigs, I don’t want to use pork, beef, lamb, etc. in the meat setting of the game.

Source of inspiration:

I got the inspiration for the meat source in the game while watching Zootopia 2.

Food Source Setting for Carnivores in Zootopia:

In the world design of Zootopia, carnivores can eat fish, insects and plant proteins for protein.

In the world design of Zootopia, carnivores can eat fish, insects and plant proteins for protein. According to the director the most popular fast food restaurant in Animal City is Bug-Burga, where the burgers are made from insects. Grasshopper shakes, cricket chips or cicada burgers can be bought in Animal City.

The first and second images shown above are taken from the film Zootopia 2. In Zootopia there is a fish market that offers fish as food. The second image is a plate of bugs, which also proves that there is a habit of consuming insects in Animal City.

Ideas gained through the Mad Animal City setting:

In my game setting I also chose fish as one of the meat sources. Cooking food is an important part of my game, but using insects as meat can cause a bad reaction to some players. I came up with plants that eat insects (e.g., flytrap, etc.) that have an interesting looking appearance and are perfect to add to my game. So I combined the habits of the insect-eating plants and made the insect-eating plants into a ‘processing station’, where insects can be transformed into different pieces of meat, thus replacing pork, beef, lamb, etc.

Insectivorous plant:

Scientific name: Nepenthes alata

Plant Features:Hogweed has evolved leaves that resemble champagne glasses, capable of catching and trapping flies and other insects. This carnivorous plant captures and digests insects.

Scientific name: Dionaea muscipula

Plant Features:Its unique ‘jaws’ are triggered by flies and other small insects that land on them and then bite the prey. Once the flytrap has bitten the unlucky insect, it secretes enzymes that break down its body into a nutrient-rich liquid that the plant can digest.

Scientific name: Drosera glanduligera

Plant Features:It is endemic to Australia and the outer tentacles are sticky to catch prey. When an insect applies pressure to these easily triggered tentacles, the plant cells rupture underneath the tentacles, ejecting the object towards the centre of the plant, where it is captured and carried to the ‘mouth’ and ‘stomach’, where it is rapidly digested.

Idea:

These are three insectivorous plants I found that I think look great. By investigating these insectivorous plants, I came up with ideas on how to make insects into pieces of meat.

Players need to collect insects in the botanical garden and sort them by colour (white, red, flesh). The player needs to feed the sorted insects to the insectivorous plants, which will secrete enzymes to digest the insects and eventually produce pieces of meat, which are the source of meat in cooking.

White meat —— Chicken and Duck

Red meat —— Beef and lamb

Flesh meat —— Pork

PS:I’m dividing these meats based on the colour of the meat in real life.

References:

Greene, P. (2020). 20 Examples of Insect Eating Plants (Pictures). [online] Wildlife Informer. Available at: https://wildlifeinformer.com/insect-eating-plants/.

in (2016). What do the carnivores eat in the Zootopia universe? [online] Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange. Available at: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/122725/what-do-the-carnivores-eat-in-the-zootopia-universe [Accessed 10 Jan. 2026].

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