Platform(s): PC (version reviewed)
Genre: Action-adventure roguelite + casual restaurant simulation made by Asian foodies

The Singapore indie gaming scene hasn’t seen much buzz outside of the Cat Quest series and the sorely underrated action RPG-made-by-two-people Ghostlore. But what these games have in common is that they do hit the right notes when it comes to action RPG controls, gameplay, and loot/rewards distribution.

You can add Cuisineer to the mix, a new hybrid title from Singapore devs Battlebrew Productions that blends isometric action gaming with one of the country’s few favourite pastimes. No, it’s not property-buying or National Service; it’s food.

Surf n’ Turf

The premise of Cuisineer is quaint and cute: adventurer cat person Pom returns to her village only to find her family’s restaurant being deserted by her parents, who chose long vacation gallivanting over food-serving responsibilities. So it’s up to Pom to not only settle the slew of debts accumulated by her folks, but also run the eatery for the village because it’s the game’s only way to earn in-game money. And to get the ingredients to start cookin’, she needs to trek dungeons filled with hostile flora and fauna who drop ingredients upon death.

Cuisineer’s gameplay loop is simple: you start the day fresh and decide on what to do. You can head to dungeons to kill loads of cute and/or large things and collect ingredients, which takes up a whole game day. After setting up the basic amenities via the tutorial, you can open your restaurant and serve patrons in a simple simulation mode where you cook food and ensure your customers get fed and pay you. You need to accrue that money from the restaurant business to pay off your debts. Paying these means you open up new levels and new ingredients for new recipes and food to cook.

Thankfully, Cuisineer isn’t one of those games with game-ending fail states. You can take your sweet time collecting money for the taxpayer; there’s no deadline to hit. In fact, you can use whatever money you earn to buy furniture for the restaurant, upgrade your cooking stations, add more seats, or even expand the restaurant to add more facilities. You can even undertake small quests from the other villagers, who usually reward you with new recipes that earn you more money, but require new kitchen tools to cook. If you want, you can open up the restaurant for half the day, then go dungeon-exploring in the other half; it’s up to you and Cuisineer will not punish you so much for half-and-half decisions.

Battlebrew sure as heck know how to make combat work, because fighting in Cuisineer is a lot of fun. Pom’s attacks and controls are responsive and quick (she had dodges with little to no cooldown in-between), while her abilities tied to her weaponry are useful in their own right. Spatulas and salmon(?) give you quick hits but short range, while tenderizers and kitchen knives have slow attacks but better wide arcs.

Items you get can be upgraded in town, and usually come with two passive buffs. Short of a few attacks that could be telegraphed better, fighting against hordes of food-themed enemies is both fun and challenging; nothing here screams frustrating, but nothing here will make you feel too relaxed that you can turn off your brand and mash your way out of trouble. Death in Cuisineer means you lose all your food loot, but at least you keep your equipment intact. This is still a roguelite after all; some penalties do need to keep you in check in case you fall asleep behind the wheel.

Which brings me to a sore point in the game: the other half of Cuisineer involving restaurant management could use a bit of work. While the sim portion is simple enough, I do feel that it needs a few more additions to make it more engaging. Opening the restaurant and serving patrons is fun the first two to three times. But by the sixth time onward you’d wish Battlebrew would add an option to speed things up temporarily. At the end of the day, if you want to get the most cash out of the game, you’ll need to dedicate 3 or so hours for this portion, and the molasses-like pacing can test people’s patience if it means sitting through the same 20 minutes watching geriatric and noble furries getting their tables, collecting their dishes, eating, and heading to the paying counter. If a 90s game like the SimCity series can add in fast-forward options, why can’t a 2023 indie game do it as well? Compared to the action portion, Cuisineer’s Diner Dash homage feels somewhat underbaked, though not entirely unplayable or without merit.

Cuisineer’s inventory management does need work. Weapons/armour, food, and ingredients are all lumped under the same category, meaning you have to plan and buy extra baggage space lest you end up with too many items to hoard. The game also vacuums the closest on-screen item once you clear out some space in your already-full inventory, meaning you have no control over what you collect.

For particular sidequests that require me to cook X amount of food, I had to prep each dish one at a time instead of in batches, which means more unnecessary wait times. I get that Singaporeans enjoy their queues like they do with Japan culture, but don’t reinforce it upon everyone else who rather just get everything sorted out in a streamlined fashion. Still, these aren’t major game-breaker issues and can be fixed over time, but it’s rather peculiar that I haven’t come across anything within my 12-hour playthrough that addresses these present issues.

Eat n’ Run

Cuisineer isn’t punishing and difficult, but it isn’t meant to be. At this point in typing this paragraph up, I’m still running the game’s simplistic restaurant bits while also going into a few runs just getting my fridge stocked and action on. Hardcore fans of roguelikes like Hades and Slay The Spire can break the game once they find the perfect item combination through their few runs in the game. But then again, this isn’t the kind of game that begs to be taxed heavily like Pom’s restaurant.

Instead, Cuisineer is a casual and relaxing take on the action-savvy roguelite genre mixed in with some breezy-if-simplistic-and-slow management gameplay. Even if you feel like you have to manage your expectations a tad, you’ll do fine in Battlebrew Productions’ latest, especially with the isometric attack-savvy bits where you let a cat girl go hog wild with a flame-powered spatula and grenade egg timers against fire elemental yaks and sentient potatoes tossing projectiles.

Pros

• Lovely and fluffy aesthetics.
• Combat is fun.
• Charming and relaxing narrative; no rush with its scope.

Cons

• Item management in inventory can be a pain.
• Restaurant sim part gets old and slow after the first few bouts.

Final Score: 80/100

Review copy provided by publisher & developer.