Cuisineer, the cutest smorgasbord of culinary combat, served up a sample platter during London’s WASD exhibition and we sat down to try out this adorable new café crawler.
It seems fitting that London, a city where commuting is a daily battle and the food choice is eclectic, served as the backdrop for a weekend that kicked off a hands-on preview of Cuisineer. Due to drop onto PC during summer, this food-focused mix of dungeoneering and café management is a proposition that caught our attention back in February. Suffice it to say we jumped at the chance to try out this unusual melting pot of ideas.
For those not in the know, Cuisineer is a cute food-focused game where you play as Pom, an adventurer who has returned back to her hometown of Paell and inadvertently inherited the family restaurant. Things, however, aren’t that simple. Anybody who’s played Food Fantasy or Moonlighter might understand that setting up shop is only easy if you’ve got a sizable investment to start with. If you don’t then, it’s time to start scavenging. In this case, the aforementioned café provides plenty of motivation to step out into the world and start dungeon crawling, culling the local wildlife for ingredients to satiate the locals.
We picked up Pom’s quest early in the game, grabbing a controller and leaping into a simple tutorial. Set in one of the game’s isometric dungeon areas, it briefly introduced an intuitive arrangement of buttons. Like any decent dungeon adventure, Pom can smash and loot with a primary attack, move in most directions, and dash away. This is augmented by a set of special skills affixed to the bottom of the screen and a set of additional health items, in case the ham has aspirations of giving you heartburn. Once through a quick smash and loot tutorial, we were taken on to Paell. This homestead is small but utterly adorable. The aesthetic takes obvious inspiration from slice-of-life staples like Story of Seasons. This is no surprise coming from publishers XSEED and Marvelous Europe. The colorful chibi citizens, cute buildings, and jovial tone of the whole welcome make this town and its citizens worth exploring.
Scattered throughout this home base, we find various smiths, stalls, and even a Bubble Tea shop. Not only do these serve as important vendors, dropping housing items, health pots, and more, but they serve as a great demonstration of the town’s vibrant characters. The flowing pink locks of Naicha and the best smith in the town Alder are all nods to the light fantasy setting of this seemingly peaceful town. This might land it somewhere between BNA and Animal Crossing, but the mix of isometric artwork and 2D still works wonderfully, when interacting with the citizens of Paell. Fortunately, the wandering residents and NPC merchants aren’t just for your entertainment. Locals bustle about the center of town waiting for your attention. With plenty of personalities walking the cobbled fountain and surrounding gardens, developer BattleBrew Productions adds plenty of personality to the side quests with tasks that manage to avoid ending up as “kill ten rats” by melding in elements of story sims. Each of the NPCs seems to have a personality and preferences all their own. Whether it’s retrieving a precious item or crafting a birthday present for a special occasion, these flavourful side dishes seem to allow players to invest some time in getting to know Pom’s new neighbors.
As much as we wanted to meet the whole neighborhood, WASD only gave us limited time and we hadn’t even checked out Pom’s restaurant. Getting into the meat of this tale, we found our newly inherited establishment in mild disarray. Having left town to go see the world, Pom’s parents pawned most of the restaurant. With no money or materials to start cooking, it became quite evident that we’d need to head straight into the core gameplay loop. Striding out of town on a quest from our remaining restaurant staffer, Biscotti, we pushed Pom into some dungeon crawling. If you’ve slashed through Moonlighter, then you’ll get the idea quickly. A range of procedurally generated dungeons of varying difficulty will unfold throughout your time in the restraint business, but we started with something bright and bountiful. The verdant walkways of these open greens are a simple isometric dungeon. Pom comes armed with the same simple spatula as the tutorial handed us and clocked in one special ability. Along the way, we encountered a wealth of flour fiends, chickens, boars, big green gooey things, and other ferocious corn cobs that we needed to cut down. This action starts by taking the wildlife down with a three-stage spatula attack and doesn’t exactly overwhelm anybody. Even when things get a little busy in this isometric view, we were able to call on a giant frying pan to fall from the sky and flatten everything on the menu. This mix of basic combat and special abilities is hardly a hardcore challenge but expect things to get far more difficult than this early click to win experience. From what I surmised, I’d expect weapon upgrades and extra abilities to decorate the bottom of Pom’s attack screen by the final release date. In the meant time, however, I can confirm that combat is free flowing and furious when it gets a little busier.
Once we filled our bag and recalled back to town, dropped off some chopped wood to make a new table at the Smtih’s shop, it got high time to cook up a storm. Like any great restaurant game, we could take our ingredients and start to bring together a few basic dishes. Spicy soup, noodles, and eggs made up most of our early orders, but that is entirely down to the customers. Upon opening up shop to the townspeople, they enter and demand a particular dish. Simply cooking and serving with a couple of clicks, and until you’ve run out of ingredients, was the only option during this demo period. Cooking doesn’t seem to take any great skill, but that doesn’t mean it won’t evolve or management won’t get just as action packed as a dungeon run l at later stages. What is clear to see, is the room left to upgrade your cooking queue, outfit the restaurant with new furniture, and learn new recipes. Whether we’ll be able to decorate to any real extent, hire staffers, and buy other equipment is a little beyond the scope of this demo.
What we did learn from this encounter is that Cuisineer manages to mix several gameplay elements into an intriguing possibility. The core money-making mechanics might revolve around a familiar shop keep-by-day then dungeon run-by-night scenario, but there’s so much more potential in this new life. Weaving slice-of-life concepts, cute characters, and a style that is utterly inviting brings a tasty treat to the table. We’re going to be watching for another opportunity to sample the Cuisineer when it arrives on PC via Steam later this year. Check out the Steam Store for more.
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