Cook, Serve, Delicious

Comfort Games

You might think that ALL video games fall under the category of ‘comfort’ games – but in my case this just isn’t true. Some games are incredibly frustrating, some games cause a lot of anxiety, some games are just not very relaxing at all to play. Some require me to actually (gasp) pay attention and be fairly awake.

Then there are comfort games. Games I play that give me such a warm fuzzy feeling, that require a little bit of concentration but not too much, and are just so quaint I absolutely adore them. The first rendition of Cook, Serve, Delicious is one such game (for me at least). Even though you’re mashing keys as fast as you can to try to serve customers on time, I just find it therapeutic to be memorizing specific orders of keys and remembering what keys go to what foods. It’s like knitting (for me) which is a lot of memory exercises.

I even made a video or two of me playing it (you can find it on my youtube channel here)

You can imagine my surprise (and joy) when I learned that yesterday Cook, Serve, Delicous 2(!) released on steam. I had seen this ages ago listed on twitch as a game with no images at all and it sort of fell off my radar since then. I don’t have the budget to pick it up this month but I’m hoping to be able to get it before too long (I’m on steam as Stargrace if we haven’t joined up as friends yet). The graphics look cute, the game play looks relatively similar to the first game and I can’t wait to dive in and make horrible bits of food for people and upgrade my restaurant.

Do you have a comfort game? Let me know in comments!

Cook, Serve, Delicious

BlogI picked this game up when it was on sale during the steam winter sale because it looked cute and I had never heard of it before. You’re given a restaurant to run, and you’re in charge of everything from scrubbing the toilets to doing the dishes and taking out the trash – not to mention the actual cooking. Everything is timed, can be done with either keyboard or mouse, and your job is to complete it all to the highest quality possible.

The tutorial is brief but since the game isn’t that complicated (just fast paced) it should be enough to get you started. You pick a few items to purchase for your menu, keeping in mind that if you don’t swap the menu up a bit, customers will get bored. You generate buzz with your food, and you open from 9am to 10pm.

At any time during the day you’ll be dealing with 1-4 (maybe more are added as time goes on, I am not sure yet) things at once. You’ll have to cook food according to what each customer wants. For example in the screenshot above there are three chicken breasts cooking. Each one has to be tenderized 6 times and then spiced and then cooked – and not burned. A little stopwatch ticks down on the food and it will tell you when it is ready but you have to pay attention because there are other meals and things being done at the same time.

So far my menu consists of beer, pizza, salad, chicken breast, and corndogs. Beer is the easiest to make, just have to make sure you don’t over fill the glass. Salad has about 8 different options that customers can ask for. Chicken is easy, as are the corndogs. Pizza has a handful of options as well. If you burn the food, serve it late, don’t clean the dishes, don’t take out the garbage, or encounter any other number of pitfalls the restaurant will fail.

You’ll also get email each day giving you a few more details about running your business, like upgrades you can do. You have to purchase equipment, and it’s way more involved than I had first thought but it’s also a lot of fun. I’m constantly talking to myself as I read the orders out loud so I can make sure I get them just right. I probably wouldn’t pay full price for the game (found here on steam) but as a 75% off sale item it was completely worth it.

Nomadic Gamer