Games

Cuisineer Review: A Deliciously Fun Chicken-Swatting RPG Morsel

BBG News

Great news! You’ve inherited a restaurant from your parents! However, there’s also a significant amount of debt attached to it that you need to clear. This is the setup for Cuisineer, an RPG dungeon crawler and cozy social sim game where you play as Pom, a spirited hero and feline character. In this game, you not only battle enemies like chickens with a spatula but also venture beyond the boundaries of Paell village. After each successful adventure, you return home to use your loot in an effort to revive the restaurant. The game offers an enjoyable blend of genres, and its engaging gameplay loop could easily consume many hours of your time.

In this game, the main idea is straightforward yet elegantly presented. Stepping beyond the cozy boundaries of the small village, filled with quaint stores and friendly villagers, you embark on an adventure into dungeons. Here, you’ll use your chosen weapon – initially a spatula – to deal with the monsters you encounter. When defeating these creatures, they drop various items such as eggs and pale meat from chickens, chilies from fire-breathing Cheelees, leafy greens when Kailans are defeated, and presumably edible items like potatoes or tomatoes when defeating a Pewtato or Tommay.

After each successful expedition through the dungeon, you return to your eatery with a bursting backpack filled with scrumptious goodies and useful resources that will help expand your restaurant. Different kinds of stone and wood collected from breaking down rocks and trees can be given to Alder, a local carpenter wolf, who creates furniture and decorative items at an affordable cost, or enhances your restaurant, providing additional room for extra tables and seating, allowing you to accommodate more customers. The more customers you can seat in your restaurant, the more meals you serve, resulting in increased income.

In your downtime from exploring treacherous dungeons filled with escalating difficulties such as pitfalls, fire, boss battles, and assorted obstacles, you can instead manage a restaurant, accommodating as many patrons as possible until the mandatory 11pm closure sends you off to bed. You’ll navigate through the lunch and dinner rush, preparing dishes from the recipes you’ve gained access to within your humble kitchen, which you can enhance with improved workstations, cooking utensils, and a larger refrigerator to allow for simultaneous preparation of multiple orders. Over time, you will grow your business into a bustling dining establishment capable of satisfying every craving, but initially, you’ll struggle with limited seating options and menu variety to keep all customers content.

In your journey of fulfilling the villagers’ quests, you’ll accumulate an array of recipes, leading to riskier expeditions into the dungeons for required ingredients. To boost your health, you can sip on the unique boba tea concoctions from shops owned by Zhenzu and Naicha.

Before embarking on these adventures, equip Pom with weapons, boots, and gloves that could be dropped by defeated enemies, found in treasure chests, or bought from local blacksmith Briquette. However, should you meet defeat while exploring the dungeon, you’ll lose most of what you’ve amassed and return to Paell in disgrace with your head down. It may seem harsh, but you can always rest and give it another go the next day.

In different dungeons, various items and resources are found. For instance, the Green Ruins offer a wealth of greens, flour, chicken, eggs, rice, exotic fruits, stones, and wood. In contrast, the Mala Caverns, volcanic in nature, provide mushrooms, spicy ingredients, sunstones, and petrified wood. The Frozen Fjord is rich in crab, fish, prawns, ice crystals, and saltwood, while the Konpeito Swamps are known for crystal wood and flavorful spices. Each dungeon also features unique boss battles. However, overcoming these bosses and safely escaping the dungeon can be quite challenging. If you find yourself in a difficult situation, you have the option to retreat by pressing down on the d-pad, which allows you to exit the dungeon slowly, keeping any collected items.

After revisiting Paell, you can personalize your kitchen, and prepare for another hectic day at your restaurant, striving to clear that substantial debt. As the seasons shift and festivals occur, various merchants arrive with unique goods, and additional missions accumulate. Yet, it’s all incredibly enjoyable.

Cuisineer is a skillfully designed roguelike RPG that never feels burdensome or unjust – there’s always a satisfying sense of advancement, and the overall experience is vibrant and delightful. Hidden beneath the cheerful exterior lies a complex and engaging experience – one that’s definitely worth trying.

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2025-02-05 18:42

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