XSEED and Marvelous always tend to bring some of the East’s most interesting games over to our shores, and they were ready to showcase more than a few of them at PAX East. I took the time to check out bothCuisineerandLoop8: Summer of Gods,and while the latter was interesting, especially with its unique relationship-based mechanics and how they come into play during combat, there was apparently some sort of error that caused the demo to restart at certain times. This meant that I sadly couldn’t experience the game’s full potential (though it did allow me to experience what it’s like to be caught in time loop, like the game’s characters), but there were hints of potential greatness there.
No problem, though, as I was more intrigued by Cuisineer, a dungeon crawler/restaurant management hybrid from the Singapore-based BattleBrew Productions that sucked me in and made up for any technical issues. Playing as Pom, an adventurer who returns home only to find their parents gone and their restaurant floundering as a result, you find yourselves having to revitalize the restaurant by renovating it and cooking up a storm. This means Pom has to put their adventuring skills to good use and head into dungeons into orders to gather ingredients, then come back and transform them into delicious dishes that can be served up to hungry patrons for cash.
And with that, we have the core gameplay loop in Cuisineer, and it makes for a highly-effective loop. But before that, we also get the opportunity to check out the town and experience one of the other big strengths, that being the colorful cast of characters, who all come across as fun and well-designed, serving the additional function of being able to sell Pom useful supplies such as weapons and health-restoring boba tea as well as additions to their restaurant such as more furniture. And after grabbing some boba and readying ourselves, it was time to dive into the dungeon for ingredients.
Of course, a majority of the ingredients here come from slaying monsters in order to get the meat from them, ranging from flocks of chickens to massive boars and sentient chili peppers. The combat is fun, with well-crafted hack-and-slash gameplay, but it comes alive when dealing with multiple enemies and having to dodge booby traps, having to maneuver around floor spikes, streaks of fire, and toxic flatulence created by the aforementioned boars, among other things. It all culminated in an impressive boss battle, showing off a good level of challenge. The procedurally-generated levels allow for a lot of exploration as well, allowing you to search for more boxes of supplies that contain other ingredients as well. You can leave the dungeon whenever possible, but how can one turn down the more prime ingredients?
Having made it back to town with a sack filled with ingredients, it was time to finally open up the restaurant. Of course, this being the beginning of the game, all we could get for the restaurant right now is a single table and chair, meaning it wasn’t exactly the most productive restaurant right now, with customers waiting by and leaving because the only seat wasn’t available at the time. Still, having to effectively take orders, head to the cauldron to cook things up, and then collect the money was all still fun, and provided a sneak peek when it comes to how enjoyably hectic the restaurant could be when it grew after more dungeon raids. Overall, Cuisineer feels like it’s whipping up an impressive bit of fusion cuisine with its hybrid gameplay, and we’ll see if the final product tastes amazing when the game comes out this summer.
