Release Date: 05/10/2012
Played On: Win
Available On: Droid / iOS / Mac / Win
Time Played: 15h (still playing)
Progress: 4 Stars (of 5)
Developer: Vertigo Gaming
Publisher: Vertigo Gaming
This won't be the first time I get excited about an odd concept finding its place within the technical world of gaming, and I hope it won't be the last. In fact, this game has spawned so many imitators that it's hard to keep track anymore. I mean, who would have ever thought that cooking games would become their own genre.
Thankfully though, some bright sparks decided to make Cook, Serve, Delicious! for us all to enjoy. It's a mouthful of a title, and a delectable game that's hard to put down. There's a sequel out there that I haven't played yet, but this original version is still worthy of your attention. What's more, you can usually pick it up for peanuts whenever there's a sale, so get on it.
In a weird perverse way, this game shares a bit of common ground with the b-grade horror fest that is The Typing Of The Dead. In both games you're tasked with hitting keys quickly and precisely to advance and beat the challenges coming your way. In Typing Of the Dead it was zombies and monsters, but Cook, Serve, Delicious! has you chasing orders and making meals.
The initial premise is simple and will be familiar to anyone who's played a Diner Dash or Cooking Mama type of game. You're given a range of increasingly difficult recipes to follow in order to create meals for customers. The better you do at making the meal, the bigger tip you get. The faster you get it done, the more customers you can serve and the more money you make overall.
This is a typical meta where you start at a one start diner and slowly upgrade your equipment, ingredients, recipes, and shop, until you're running a five star fancy restaurant. There are also cooking competitions to take part in, as well as special catering jobs that bring in some extra cash. It's a simple progression arc, but it needs to be. With all the other complexities going on in the minute to minute gameplay, you don't want to be scratching your head over a heavy plot.
The real meat of Cook, Serve, Delicious! is all the overlapping systems that consistently keep you on your toes. Although your primary focus is going to work each day and making people food from open to close.
As each shift passes, customers enter your establishment and place an order, which appears on a limited list. You can only take a certain number of orders, so it's important to get through them quickly to allow others to take their place. Sitting on orders for a long time can mean less customers coming to the counter, so less money made. What's more, once an order is placed the customer will start getting impatient and if you don't deliver the meal within a time limit, they leave angry.
To fill orders you must first select it, then perform a certain number of tasks to create each meal. For example, making a burger for someone starts with cooking meat patties on the hot plate. Customers always ask for different orders when there are options, so a burger might have any number of patties or different types of meat that need to be cooked. Once they're done they can be put on a bun, followed by lettuce, tomato, cheese, and any number of other ingredients that the customer could have ordered. It could be as simple as a couple of beef patties and a few slices of cheese, or it could involve everything on the menu in different quantities. Now remember that burgers are one of the easiest meals to prepare, as they have less ingredients and preparation than the more advanced recipes.
That's all well and good, but it's important to remember that all of this is done by pressing the correct keys corresponding to tasks and ingredients. When you activate a burger order, it immediately takes you to the hot place where you hit a key like M to place a patty on to cook. Hitting it again places another patty, and so on until you're done. After they're cooked you'll automatically switch to building the burger, where you place ingredients with other key presses. L might be lettuce, T might be tomato, B might be bacon, and you get the idea. The simple task of hitting letters on the keyboard means that you can get this all done in a matter of seconds, but it takes a bit of practice and memorisation first.
Typing Of The Dead was all about reacting to what's on screen, while Cook, Serve, Delicious! focuses heavily on repetition and memorisation. At the start you're reading each ingredient and finding its corresponding button to press before pressing it. In the later game, you've done it so many times before that all you need to do is read the order and press the corresponding buttons as you read through. It becomes second nature and rhythmical as you react on instinct and start punching out meals in a matter of moments.
When you're in the flow and working with recipes you're used to, the game is exceptionally rewarding. It feels really good to rack up a heap of orders and blaze through them with a flurry of keys and frantic concentration.
At the same time though, you also have to clean up mess and take out the rubbish, or your customers won't be happy. Cleaning is similar to making meals, as it takes a series of keyboard inputs to perform each one. After a while you learn the patterns and whenever it's time to flush the toilet, or do the dishes, you'll be bashing away at the keys to get it done and dusted.
This might be the bulk of gameplay in Cook, Serve, Delicious!, but there are more systems going on at the same time to keep things interesting. Even though customers trickle through consistently throughout the day, there are two rush hours in every shift that see an influx of orders to try and stay on top of. These moments are a great way to earn lots of money, but can be crippling if you let it overwhelm you.
Each day is also governed by some more under-the-hood systems, like weather and the time of day. Customers prefer certain foods when it's cold and rainy, and others when the sun is shining. Additionally, they might get put off by the smell of greasy foods cooking in the morning, and tend to order more substantial meals in the evening.
To deal with these variables, you must set your menu ever day before each shift. Depending on recipes and equipment you have unlocked, there is only a finite number of meals available to you, each with their own properties to consider. Some create more waste so the rubbish bin will need to be emptied more often. Others are messy and use more dishes, while some even make customers use the toilet more. Furthermore, each meal has pros and cons that relate to the weather and time of day, so you know what's going to be popular and when.
All of this might be starting to sound like a lot, but there's more. Meals also suffer from menu fatigue, meaning that the longer they are kept on the menu for consecutive days, the less interested customers will be. This encourages you to change up your menu regularly, instead of sticking to a few dishes you know how to make.
Of course, each meal can also be upgraded to offer more varieties (like new ingredients for burgers), and also increase their value. At the end of every shift you're given a report card that scores your performance for the day. It takes into account how many meals you made, how well you made them and if there were any mistakes, and how much money you made from sales and tips. The better you do, the more you progress toward that five star restaurant.
Maybe you're thinking this all sounds a bit easy; just press the button when you need to and practice memorising every input. Unfortunately though, there are more than one ingredient that starts with the same letters, so it can be a bit hard to memorise so many different inputs. C might be cheese in one meal, but then it could be H in another because capsicum already held the spot. There are enough differences and unique combinations to keep it challenging and fresh, even through to the end game.
Additionally, there are ways to test your skills along the way by taking part in cooking competitions and catering jobs. The latter usually focuses on a theme like "Italian Food", and tasks you with serving customers at an event. These jobs have required recipes, which can be difficult to juggle so you really need to earn the extra cash. Similarly competitions task you with making a series of dishes as fast as you can. They also tend to follow a theme, so you might be making hot dogs and pouring beers over and over against the clock, or making as many pizzas as possible. The competitions are really a test of speed and help you practice typing out combinations quickly, and are almost essential for practicing some recipes.
Remember how you have to plan your menu each day? It's not as simple as rotating foods around to make sure that the weather, time of day, and fatigue are satisfied. A more subtle requirement is make sure that you have a good mix of easy to make cheap meals, and more complex and challenging expensive meals. Pulling beers requires holding down a key for a few seconds and nothing else, but it's a cheap sell and you can't make much money that way. Making lasagne is a bit more challenging as it needs specific layers repeated in the dish, something to top it off, then a long cooking time in the oven.
Ensuring you have a good combination of meals will mean that you're able to maximise your productivity and juggle many things at one. While waiting for parts of various meals to be cooked, you can work on other meals and orders. Although, if you leave something in the oven too long, you'll burn it and the customer won't be happy, so you don't want to be stuck making something complex while another meal overcooks.
This is what I mean when I say that there are many systems conspiring to ensure that Cook, Serve, Delicious! is a challenging experience requiring your full concentration. It's like a rhythm game, as you'll avoid being distracted when you're in the zone and take on more challenging tasks to expand your skills. Everything manages to work together in a balanced complexity that quickly offers an honest rush of satisfaction when a perfect day is achieved.
I guess that's the appeal of Cook, Serve, Delicious!, as the gameplay loop is truly satisfying to encounter. Part of me was afraid that it would get too difficult and confusing, but there's a gentle progression curve that ensures you'll be learning and practicing fast enough to keep up. Pretty soon I was selecting more difficult combinations to guarantee myself a challenging day, as pushing yourself to really nail every input is a lot of fun.
Mechanics and systems aren't everything though, so let's take a moment to recognise the excellent presentation as well. The whole game follows a unique style that feels like a mix between collage and realism, as you can see in the screenshots included in this post. The customers are a mixed bag of odd and ordinary looking folk, while the food often looks delicious and tasty.
The audio design works well with the gameplay and offers up some satisfying sound effects for feedback. Hitting inputs makes a strong smacking sound, while ingredients like sauces and cheese squelch and splat onto the screen. That feeling of banging out a meal within seconds is only enhanced by the deliberately punchy soundscape accompanying it.
If I'm truly honest, the aesthetic choices made in Cook, Serve, Delicious! aren't really to my taste, but it doesn't actually matter. The more I played the game, the more its visuals grew on me and I ended up liking the weird looking customers and oddly realistic food. The heavy saturation on colour for different ingredients goes a long way in making it easy to spot them when they appear. The best way to know if you've already put the mushrooms on the pizza is to look and see them sitting there or not. The distinct style means that it only takes a glance to instantly recognise what's missing and what's already been included. So I don't really dislike the art style much, as it serves a smart purpose for understand the game screen and making sense of its interface.
As a rule, I try to avoid saying things like "you have to play it to really understand how it feels", as it defeats the purpose of writing anything at all. Although, at times there are sensations that I can't convey in a satisfactory way, so I have to resort to saying "go play it". This is one of those times, as I don't feel like I can successfully portray the feeling you get from nailing a shift in Cook, Serve, Delicious!. It's a strong visceral wave of accomplishment, that feels earned and won thanks to the physicality of mashing precise keyboard inputs. I'm also allowing the sentiment here because this is an older, cheaper game, so the barrier to entry is pretty low.
There's so much to enjoy about Cook, Serve, Delicious! and it immediately makes sense, revealing some nuanced and elegant design. It's impressive to think that all of these systems are working in harmony with one another, while simultaneously providing a challenge. What's more, I never felt like I didn't understand what was being asked of me as I progressed into harder territory. My failures were from my own mistakes, while my success were proof of my developing skills.
This is one game that feels tactile and responsive, thanks to a meaningful control scheme and excellent feedback on actions. There are many hours of fun to be had in this little game, even though I never expected to be so enthralled by a cooking game.
Thankfully one of the beautiful things about gaming in general, is that it doesn't matter what's going on under the hood if you're having fun. To that end, this is a super fun game to play whether you're challenging yourself or not. I wonder what other genres can be enhanced by a tailored keyboard-only input method.