Hand Stretched

Behind the warm bricks and the proper wood-fired oven, past the smell of fresh dough, is a tight game of precision and margins. A game where a good night is measured in quality food, delivered well, and with books that end up in the black rather than in the red.

Hand Stretched puts you and up to two friends in charge of the pizzeria, running 6 minute shifts, each in one of three key roles: Chef, Waiter or Manager. Play together over LAN or online, each on your own machine — or split into two shops and go three against three, the same customers walking through both doors, best profit wins. Nobody is burying you in orders. You are given just enough that doing it well is the whole trick. Serve hot, waste little, keep the customers from wandering off, and turn a profit whilst rent, wages, and stock costs quietly eat away at your bottom line.

PICK A ROLE, PULL YOUR WEIGHT

Three jobs, one team. The Chef works the oven: stretch the dough, add the toppings, and retrieve from the oven before it burns to a crisp. The Waiter runs the floor: seat parties before they give up and leave, take orders, pour the drinks, and get the food out while it is still hot to earn a tip. The Manager keeps the business breathing: order the stock, watch the till, and settle a complaint before it becomes a walkout. The team part is the hand-offs. A pizza going cold on the pass is a Waiter who was elsewhere. A Chef stood idle is a Manager who let the cheese run out.

RIGHT FIRST TIME, OR SENT BACK

A game of details, not speed. Put the wrong topping on and serve it anyway, the table will notice and you'll be making it again or eating a refund. Serve a pizza cold and you can wave the tip goodbye. Deliver a whole table's order in one trip and you might see a bit extra for the trouble. Every slip up has a price: a remake costs you time and a binned base, a complaint costs you a discount, and both come straight off your bottom line. Do it cleanly and a busy stretch becomes a genuinely satisfying, and profitable, shift.

MIND THE MARGINS

You pay for your ingredients the moment you buy them, so every shift opens in the red and you sell your way out. Meanwhile the rent and wages tick up whether a soul walks in or not. Waste eats your margin, refunds eat your margin, and only happy tables leave a tip, so keeping people cheerful is not manners, it is money. Your star rating rides on it: a healthy margin and not a single walkout is what separates a proud three stars from a shrug.

STOCK, SPEED AND THE PRICE OF PANIC

Run out of dough mid-shift and the whole line stops, so the Manager is forever reading the shelves. Order too little and you stock out. Order too much and that is cash sitting in the fridge. And when you have cut it too fine, you can pay for a faster supplier: the cheap van takes its time, the express one turns up in seconds and helps itself to your margin on the way past. Leave it too late, shelves empty and the overdraft maxed, and the night ends early with the shutters down and the business bankrupt.

THE OVERTIME QUESTION

When the clock hits zero with tables still waiting and pizzas still in the oven, you get one call: shut now, or buy another 15, 30 or 45 seconds at time and a half wages. The doors are closed, so no new custom is coming. It only pays off if you can turn the people already sat down into settled bills before the borrowed time runs out. Call it right and it is the difference between a good night and a great one. Call it wrong and you have paid premium wages to watch a table leave anyway.

SHORT SHIFTS, LONG MEMORIES

A shift lasts six minutes. Long enough to test a plan, short enough that you will always want one more. Pace quickens the further you climb, the arrivals coming faster and the patience running shorter, and your best nights go on the leaderboards, where you will learn in time that your friends are not quite as good as they claim.

TOGETHER, OR AT EACH OTHER'S THROATS

Play solo and run all three roles yourself. Team up with up to two friends and split the load (or the blame!) — each of you at your own machine, over LAN or online. Cooking alongside someone brings its own wrinkle: with a second pair of hands on the line the oven wants watching properly, and a pizza nobody turns halfway will scorch. Or go shop against shop, three a side, where the only thing better than a clean shift is watching the other lot fumble theirs with the very same orders.

FACES ON, GLOVES OFF

In LAN or friends only play, every player gets a live kitchen cam and voice chat, so the whole team is on screen and reacting in real time. It is the closest thing to a real kitchen without the burns, and it turns a friends night or a LAN into something properly daft. When everyone can see your face, there is nowhere for the blame to hide.

FROM OUR KITCHEN TO YOUR COMPUTER

Hand Stretched started as a pure passion project. I have a separate, full-time career, but I wanted a hobby project that I could build for and with my young children. Every mechanic, level design, and core concept came directly from our brainstorming sessions at the kitchen table. 

Because I am a solo developer, juggling a full-time job and family life, AI tools served as our digital force multiplier. It allowed us to generate (to our vision) the visual assets, the code and build the website needed to bring our family's game idea to life, whilst music and some code elements were sourced from online sources by generous contributors who license their work for anyone to use (full credits in the game - you guys rock!). We are incredibly proud of what we built together, and we hope you feel the heart (and the stress!) that went into every shift.