Cuisineer
Game Title: Cuisineer
Released: November 9, 2023
Game Length: 30 Hours
Grade: B-
Patches
Flavoursome Fixes: Back in June 2023, there was a demo released for the game. It had a very cute aesthetic but the mechanics of the game were quite limiting. Within its first couple weeks of release in November 2023, they released Flavoursome Fixes that allowed you to turn off the eating sound in restaurants (for those with Misophonia), toned down the audio pickup sound, increased the stack size to 30, added the option to pause the game in options, pause the game if your controller becomes disconnected, adjusted cost values and itemization. Month by month, they slowly fixed bugs, balanced mechanics, and added quality of life features like being able to sell weapons and furniture. These were all minor but essential things the developers were able to focus on a few at a time.
Fresh Features: January 28th, 2025 came a massive patch full of new features. They added a music player that changes what song plays while you serve customers. You can now eat meals in the world for buffs. The tailor will now sell you clothes that you can physically wear from your wardrobe. There are festivals with interactable objects in town and unique items to buy. There are new heavy-hitting weapons. Calendars will show the next season and loading time has been decreased. While these changes don't solve the core problems of the game, they do help alleviate some of the monotony.
Restaurant
Waiter: The game is very simplistic when it comes to serving people. From a gameplay perspective, you have three main things to worry about: (1) wait until an exclamation point appears above a station, (2) start cooking whatever meals appear in the list, and (3) collect from the cash register. I think of about 50 things the game doesn't require you to do that others have done from this genre. You do not have to direct people to their table, give them suggestions, write down their order, remember which station offers which recipes, play a mini-game at the cooking stations, or physically wait at the station while a meal is prepared. The only time you have to worry about carrying the meal to the table is when greater nobles appear halfway through the game. Make sure you grab their food before someone who ordered the same thing grabs it, and give customers the right order or they will run out without paying. You can use your dash ability while in the store. About once a week, you might need to look over someone's shoulder to make sure they pay for their meal. There will never be a time you can cook the wrong meal. If by chance someone comes in and you don't have the ingredients for a specific meal they desire, a notice will appear above their head for a few seconds before they throw a tantrum right out the front door. Customers will wait for a seat approximately the same amount of time someone takes to finish a meal before leaving upset.
Customers: If you look closely, there is a very clever and sophisticated system built within the orders you receive in your restaurant. Children will normally order the easiest meals, town members generally order average meals, and the noble will order the most sophisticated things to cook. While it might be strange, females are more likely to ask for something that's harder to make you might not have the ingredients to make that day. The time of day will also determine on when these characters come in with the elderly appearing at any time of day, especially during tea time, and the noble appearing during lunch or dinner. Surprisingly, none of your friends or special characters you meet in town will come in to eat at your restaurant. There are no special seating arrangements. While some characters move faster than others, they will all take the same amount of time eating their meals. Greater nobles are more likely to order more than one meal from their seat.
Decorations: In the very early parts of the game, you will be restricted with a set number of stations. There is not a limit on the number of places customers can sit down other than having the room to place down a table and chair. Square tables can have four chairs arranged in a fashion that two people aren't using the same spot to eat their meal. There is a difference between the fridges you gain while upgrading your restaurant and the ones you can have built. There is a limit on the number of fridges you can have up front. Periodically as you upgrade your restaurant, you will obtain a chest (and fridge) in the mail to store equipment and materials in your bedroom. A calendar can be used on the wall to see the days of the week. You cannot place decorations down on any tiles that might block restaurant mechanics or customer pathing. These decorations don't seem to necessarily bring in more customers, extend their wait time, make them order better meals, or have them give you bigger tips. From my research, they only help decide which kind of customers you are more apt to have visit your restaurant.
Recipes: You can prepare meals four different ways: frying pan, oven, pot, and prep table. You must upgrade stations to cook higher tier meals. Upgrades will rotate between increasing the number of meals you can prepare ahead of time and then unlocking the next level of recipes. You can access a list of all recipes with their appropriate tier and station inside your journal. Any meals you don't have ingredients for will not be highlighted in the list. Meals prepared when the restaurant isn't open cannot be sold. When you collect them from the table, they will go directly into your inventory. They then can only be used for quests or upgrades. You can store them in the fridge for later use.
Pacing Problem
Tips: One of the most devastating decisions in the game is dishing out (food pun intended) essential tutorial tips over a period of several weeks through the mail. There is a fair number of them with awesome pictures attached showing off how most of the systems in the game work. But for some reason, there were still messages coming through roughly 30 in-game days later, when my restaurant was upgraded 6 times, telling me how decorations influence your customers and how vendors rotate out within the marketplace. It would have been much better to see these displayed during my first time interacting with each character.
Inventory: Another big problem that generated some early learning pains is managing your inventory. All resources have a cap of 30 items. This includes wood, stone, and ingredients. Each weapon takes one slot of your inventory. You start with 10 slots. You can buy 5 more slots at a time from Pastel De Nata, the llama merchant that appears periodically as one of the merchants in the marketplace. The cost per upgrade increments by about 500 coins (going just from 35 slots to 40 slots cost about 5,000 coins). Your belt can only hold two weapons and can be refitted with additional slots that hold consumable items (four total) from the Bubble Tea Shop. Considering that there is no way to store items or save your position in a region, progression can be difficult when you are forced to leave some things behind before reaching the final boss of a region.
Quests: Blue exclamation marks will appear on the map when a character in town has a request for you. These appear after major transitions like opening a new region, gaining reputation for your restaurant after selling a number of meals, or upgrading how much room you have to serve customers. Most of these will require weapons, material, ingredients, or meals you can make during your off-hours in exchange for a new recipe. A few will require things like defeating bosses or increasing your reputation. The quest system is not very good. The quest will not inform you or update when you have some of the items in your inventory. They will update you on the number of meals sold or enemies defeated. The characters will not have an updated indicator when you do have enough. Items must be manually handed over and accepted to complete the process. They will not display an exclamation for a new quest if you have one already pending. Some characters will only show a new quest if you enter your restaurant or leave town. You can view all your accepted quests in a side option of your journal.
Environment
Unlocking Regions: There are a total of four regions to explore. The first region that is populated by the chickens will provide you eggs, flour, leafy greens, and rice. The second region is filled with lava that offer tomatoes, potatoes, flaming spice, and mushrooms. The third is a cold wasteland with crab, fish, prawn, tentacles, and ice. The fourth region is a swamp with a gauntlet of enemies from the previous areas. Paying off the debt collector will unlock each region. While it is good to gather better ingredients, upgrading your stations for meals that require more than one or two ingredients is more important for your checkbook.
Resources: While there might seem to be some sort of trick to obtain more ingredients from defeating enemies, the amount that drops is rather random. Any type of trees that are not fully grown can be broken down for wood. You can obtain the basic wood in every region and the special kind that would be available in their given environment. Stones can be found usually scattered about as well. The veins that show minerals will drop the next tier of stone. Crates have a chance to drop almost anything. One type of enemy will always drop some sort of equipment. After completing a closed arena where two waves of enemies appear or a boss fight, a chest will generally provide you some miscellaneous items and a handful of equipment.
Traps: There are a number of hazards that cater to the region you explore. Although enemies cannot activate these on their own, they do receive damage if you trigger them. They do receive mild damage while crossing lava to reach you. They can receive damage if you push them into some dangerous puddles. No one, including yourself, can fall into the pitfalls between landmasses. However, you do receive a health penalty if you dash off a cliff. Nothing halts your weapon attacks from hitting enemies, including giant walls. You will lose 80% of your inventory if you lose all your health.
Combat
Weapons: Your primary attack consists of a fast sword, rapid spear, slow greatsword, or range strikes. While their functionality are similar, the weapon special attacks are all unique. For example, a spatula will summon a frying pan while a fish will hit everything in front of you (while pulling the character forward). You can see some preview screenshots of these inside one of the tip windows. It is possible to initiate a special attack and cancel the action before the animation finishes. Range weapons have ammo that take a little bit of time to reload before they can be used again. You can manually reload at any time or use their special ability to fully deplete the entire clip. When it comes to stats, elemental strikes are only applied to the weapon they are attached to and only after completing an attack combo.
Dashing: Surprisingly, moving around at a quick pace is a key component to defeating enemies quick. Any type of equipment can apply an elemental factor where you can shock enemies from where you dash from, create flame or ice puddle where you end up, or shoot a poison at the end of your dash. In addition, you can perform a dash strike by attacking right after you perform a dash. Unlike an elemental strike, you can apply multiple mods at once by any type of equipment with them attached.
Stat Stacking: Equipment can have a lot of different modifiers but some of them are only useful if you can use an elemental or dash strike. These include extending their effects by a few seconds or increasing the damage you deal after they are applied. There are skin modifiers that apply when an enemy hits you, ways to increase your critical output, small chance to automatically shoot a range per strike, deal more damage depending on how much health you have, or increase your maximum health pool.
Protection: The game doesn't necessarily have a way to decrease the amount of damage you receive from enemies. You can buy drinks that will restore some health or even remove all ailments. Dungeons also will occasionally have fountains you can drink from to gain 50 health. There is a blacksmith that you can pay a hefty sum to increase your weapons damage by 1 or increase the amount of health from your gloves & boots by another 5 points. The game does provide you a shield mechanic buff that nullifies all range attacks. Depending on which version you have, you can reflect all projectiles while attacking or dashing.
Brewing: Equipment can have up to two modifiers on them. Their benefits are based on their tier. You cannot upgrade the modifier tier. Instead, the game provides you a way to change or add a modifier. These will be completely random unless you add a certain kind of meal to the pot to narrow down the scope. You can choose to refuse the new modifier and pay a higher price to "roll again" but you will have to provide a meal for each opportunity. Similar to upgrading your equipment at the blacksmith, you will not be able to use your item or upgrade another item until the next day.
Summary
Review: While the aesthetics of Cuisineer are quite pleasing and the mechanics all seem to be in working order, this curious game is severely mismanaged from the very beginning. Every system seems to be very limiting or punishing to the player. You aren't able to complete a dungeon with everything you collect, return to town temporarily to store items, escape a dungeon easily, upgrade multiple things at once, or benefit enough from those upgrades to defeat enemies quickly. Although you can change the difficulty setting to lower the damage threshold, gathering enough items for mere non-essential decorations can still become a unnecessary chore. At least the smaller price can help make your decision to play this game a little easier.