You know when you have a game, which reminds you so much of parts of other games that it feels… at home, this is a game that I have been offered a review key for recently. With a sprig of planning, a shake of staffing and a large stove to simmer; from Dapper Penguin Studios (you might remember them from Rise of Industry) and published by Kasedo Games, we have Recipe for Disaster. The developers were kind enough to offer me this key for free, but apart from that, the next few hundred words are my own fertile imagination – which was growing next to the sirloin steak – which was forgotten about in the fridge for a few weeks. Moooo!
I want to thank Kasedo Games for the offer of a key. I am looking forward to checking out more of this title on my Twitch stream and updating this review as I go.
The objective of the game is quite simple. You have a restaurant, across a number of different scenarios, and you must pass the qualifying points in order to progress.
At the moment, there is 5 scenarios across the storyline, completing the objectives unlocks the next scenario. The Early Access release, hitting the Steam game store emporium on Thursday 4th November 2021 as I understand it will be focusing on those five scenarios.
That does not mean that Recipe for Disaster is not planned for any expansion. What is currently a single player storyline based offering is expected to have both multi-player, freeplay modes and expanded storylines. Dapper Penguin Studios currently have an early access roadmap available as part of their press kit which showing what we should expect over the coming months:
Cooking Up a Simple Broth
So to the game.
Recipe for Disaster brings me back to a few games. None of them are the same as this, but then I could argue that each one makes me think about how I am cooking up a storm in this new kitchen. You know this is going to be a hinderance. It definitely will mean I make so many mistakes.
The Look
Let’s start by the look of the game. Characters are almost autonomous once you have decided who is going to be your chef, who is your server and which lucky chap will be cleaning the toilets. You can click on an object and assign a person to it, or click on a person and assign them to do something.
Whether it is intended or not, it reminds me of later incarnations of The Sims, albeit which more squareness in the graphics and a pointy ridge head that reminds me of Kryton from Red Drawf.
Then – certainly in the storyline scenarios – there is the need to design, or redesign the menu. Your Sims restaurant customers never seem to be happy and the Boiled Clams an overpriced disaster. So you have to work at your recipes and prepare them in just the right order. It felt a little more advanced than Automachef in that respect; at least in the Hermes Interactive game you knew the recipes would work.
In Recipe for Disaster though none of the starting meals seem to work for me. The customers don’t like them and it all feels like I need to completely revise the meals before I have even started. I can stick on a bit of grilled salmon, fried chips and a slice of lemon and the customers complain; even if I stick my best chefs on each station. I might be looking at this gameplay the wrong way but surely there is a reason why I start a scenario with two seafood dishes that sound disgusting?
The customers are vocal, very vocal. They will tell you if they don’t like your food, even if you are charging them cost price for it and working for free. One thing the customers can’t do is set fire to your kitchen!
A Disaster
One thing that I think immediately needs a little refinement is the fact that things need to be clean, tidy and safe. There is a great feature in the system that things can catch fire. I love the idea that in the middle of the cooking process, if a lacking chef spoils a dish that much; that they can set the kitchen alight. Cookers, grills and … metal workbenches?
So you can see where I am going with this already. I love the fact that chefs can have an absolute mare of a cook. In fact, I would offer up a Chef Gordon Ramsey meme from Hells Kitchen if I was not scared of the copyright stick. The chefs can head towards a breakdown if they are using the wrong equipment, that they are not skilled for at the wrong time. I also like the fact that they can set the kitchen on fire.
The problem I have is that in Recipe for Disaster, everything seems to be able to catch fire, including stainless steel worktops. It might sound minor, but it is blurring the line between realism and fantasy a little too much for me. Now, if there was a flag attached to the object for “there is food on here” and that caught fire; fine.
Edible Problems too
The other ‘Disaster’ at the moment is that for Recipe for Disaster diners, everything seems to be wrong almost all the time. You don’t like the grilled salmon? WHY don’t you like the grilled salmon? The recipe is created, the cooking times arbitrarily added by the game and even if you try to do time into the process it seems to simply ignore you.
You also have a problem with a recipe for disaster if you try too hard to make a meal that they will like. A number of times now, I have tried various iterations of a dish to make the customer happy, but they still complain there is nothing on the menu they like!
“I like Fried Spicy Chicken” apparently means but if you put chips with it then I will complain that there is nothing on the menu! I think it would have worked better if the orders were more like… a restaurant. You can order a main (meat, vegetarian or other) and then a side like fries, grilled asparagus and more.
The Thing Is….
I am actually enjoying the game. People are already adding workshop items for things that I would expect to see later in the early access process, and maybe Recipe for Disaster will take note and accommodate that. I already plan to stream the game a few days after release (day job – comes first) because I did enjoy it quite a bit.
I do think that a bit of work is needed o bring Recipe for Disaster up to speed though. There are a few wonky bits but also some really good bits… and it is the good bits bringing me back for more.