Cuisineer - Switch Review

Cuisineer, the newly released title from Battlebrew Productions, adds a touch of spice to the roguelite genre. You play as Pom, an adventurous catgirl who decides to come back to her hometown after receiving a letter from her parents. In this letter, you learn that Pom’s parents are off on an adventure around the world.

While they are gone, they entrust the family restaurant to you. However, what they didn’t mention in their letter is that they also left behind a hefty debt that you must pay as well. You have to crawl through procedurally generated dungeons to gather the ingredients and resources to stock and upgrade your restaurant.

Not to mention that after you gather these materials, you must actually run the restaurant yourself. From arranging the seating, cooking the orders, and dealing with those hectic lunch rushes, how well you perform will earn you the money you need to pay off your debt and make your restaurant the talk of the town.

The Good

The first thing you will notice about Cuisineer is the beautifully drawn characters and the deliciously detailed drawings of the recipes that you can learn to sell at your restaurant. I found myself wandering around the town to talk to every townsperson I could, just to see every character model I could find. By the way, my absolute favourite characters were the sisters at the Bubble Tea Shop, Naicha and Zhenzhu! Then, later in the game, every time I unlocked a new recipe, I could almost feel myself getting a bit peckish just by looking at the pictures of the dishes. Be careful if you play this game on an empty stomach; it’s dangerous!

Even though a restaurant simulator/roguelite title is nothing new, it felt so innovative to me. You need to do both equally in order to progress, as both parts are dependent on each other. You need materials and ingredients to stock your restaurant, so you delve into a dungeon. You must run the restaurant in order to earn enough money to progress the story. It’s a beautifully addicting circle of gameplay for not only those of us who love the roguelite genre but also those of us who enjoy simulation games as well. 

One of my favourite parts of playing Cuisineer is the dungeon crawling aspect. I love clearing out level after level of monsters and looting wood or stone. The best part of any roguelite game is defeating a difficult enemy and getting that sweet, sweet rare loot. In Cuisineer, the rare loot is usually in the form of different weapons and gear. I absolutely adore the quirky weapons that Pom can wield. You start out with a simple spatula, but you can eventually get things such as the swordfish (a spear-like weapon), the tenderiser (a great hammer weapon), or my personal favourite, the smackerel (a sword-like weapon).

TL;DR

• Amazing visuals
• Fun and addicting gameplay loop
• Charming and quirky items

The Bad

The biggest complaint that I have about Cuisineer are the loading screens. They’re everywhere. Especially in the town where you spend a lot of your time towards the beginning of the game. You enter the restaurant… loading screen. You walk ten steps to your bedroom—another loading screen. I wouldn’t complain as much if there were a variety of loading screens to see, or maybe tips at the bottom of the screen. However, every loading screen is the same image that goes from black and white to colour as it loads. Being hit with loading screens back to back really takes from the experience of playing the game, in my opinion, as they aren’t short load times either. 

Finding NPCs for quests can be difficult at times, too. I had the same issue with other simulation games like Stardew Valley, where sometimes I had no idea where a certain NPC would be for a quest. You could run into the problem where you find yourself holding onto a quest item for days because the NPC is nowhere to be found. I find that part of simulation games a bit tiresome since there is no way to know where they are other than just scouring the map every day and finding a pattern eventually—or just looking it up on the game’s wiki.

TL;DR

• Loading screen frequency/duration
• Finding NPCs can be difficult

Final Score: 7/10

Overall, Cuisineer was an extremely fun and addicting game that had many things going for it. Even though the loading screens are a bit too much at times, the beautiful characters, deliciously detailed dishes, and the downright silly weapons more than make up for it. Make sure to pick up a copy of Cuisineer. It’s one for the (cook) books.

Thank you for checking out our Cuisineer Switch review, thank you to Marvelous (via Decibel PR) for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

• Andrew Caluzzi (Inca Studios / Camped Out)
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