The rougelite (and by extension the rougelike) genre of games has seen quite the boom in recent years, with indie developers and even high-profile developers getting in on the fun. But as for me, I could never find a game from this genre that I truly enjoyed playing more than a couple hours before dropping it entirely.
However, when I saw the premise of Cuisineer by developer BattleBrew Productions, my curiosity was peaked, especially since I’m a huge fan of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, and this one seemed like a game that is just the thing I am looking for.
Time to Repoen
In Cuisineer, you play as Pom, a young girl who often goes out on adventures. One day, she receives a letter from her parents asking her to come back to her hometown of Paell, to wish her parents off into what they describe as their “last adventure before retirement”. However, upon arriving at the restaurant, she finds out that her parents had already gone off to their journey across the world.
Much to Pom’s dismay, they also want her to take care of the restaurant before they return. And they also happened to sell all of the furniture inside to pay for their trip. Talk about a way to make things difficult, huh? But Pom decides to take on the challenge, and with her culinary skills, attempts to reopen Potato Palace. And don’t worry, you’re going to cook more than just potatoes, because there are dozens of different recipes.
We Fight to Eat Tonight
The main gameplay aspect of Cuisineer can be divided into two parts. First, you’ll need to serve dishes to your customers, but as I’ve mentioned previously, the restaurant barely has any furniture or ingredients to speak of. And to get those materials, you’ll have to go hunting across several dungeons in Cuisineer, and true to the rougelite name of the game, every time you enter them, the floor layout and what enemies you’ll encounter will change every single time.
Armed with her trusty weapon, Pom can perform a variety of attacks, including but not limited to, throwing spatulas, dishes and even fish bombs around. You’ll encounter several enemies such as chicken, boars and even some odd vegetable-looking enemies, and they all drop specific ingredients. There are also trees and rocks you can break to obtain wood and stone, which will be important later to craft us some furniture.
I will say that right off the bat, Cuisineer’s dungeon design is oddly reminiscent of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series for me. The game offers four different difficulties, which reduce the damage taken by Pom by as much as 80% if you’re looking for a casual experience, making this highly accessible for the average casual player.
It’s worth noting that Pom’s bag can only hold up to 10 items at first inside dungeons, and even after going through two whole floors, I already could not hold any further materials, so it’s important to strategize what to upgrade in your restaurant, or at least, until you get the first couple bag upgrades from the shop.
Handling Your Restaurant
Now let’s talk about the second main gameplay aspect, and that’s about the restaurant. The main hub city, Paelle, has several shops for you to take advantage of. You got a carpenter that can craft you some furniture for your restaurant, the smithy to forge stronger weapons to help on your adventure, and many others.
Upon opening your restaurant, customers will immediately start to come, and you also have these rush moments during early afternoon and evening, similar to the lunch rush and dinner rush that you’d see in a typical restaurant. Customers will ask for a specific dish, and you must cook them. The game will automatically place the completed dish on top of the table and the NPC will automatically walk over and grab it.
Now, here’s where you’ll start to see a bottleneck. Sometimes, customers might ask you for a recipe you do not own yet, or be unable to sit due to the lack of tables and chairs. And the latter issue is going to be the most prevalent, unless you’re quick to buy them from the carpenter. If you are unable to cook a particular order, or leave a customer without a table for too long, they will leave in a fit of rage, but as far as I could tell, that doesn’t seem to negatively impact your restaurant.
Overall, managing the restaurant can be very hectic, but fun. It has this vibe where you have to be constantly paying attention to what’s going on, and since customer orders are completely random, you also need to be properly stocked. And looking at game trailers, your restaurant can get huge in the later portions of the game, which will make it much more challenging to multitask the various customers, especially during the rush hours.
Cuisineer Looks to be a Fun Game
Even considering the few hours I had with the game, I’m really enjoying Cuisineer. It has this Rune Factory-esque charm mixed with Mystery Dungeon that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced in a game before. It’s so addicting to balance the two gameplay aspects together, and I’m looking forward to seeing what else this game has to offer.
And trust me, even as someone who generally does not like rougelites at all, Cuisineer’s gameplay loop is just addicting from the beginning, and while further testing is required, this might just be the first ever rougelite I ever end up liking in a long while.
Special thanks to XSEED Games and BattleBrew Productions for sending PSLegends a preview code for the purposes of this article.
