Recipe for Disaster

Review

Your dream is to open a restaurant and become one of the best dining destinations in the world, hopefully landing one, two or maybe three Michelin stars! Then, you can duplicate your winning stratagem repeatedly and beat the 32 Michelin stars that the famous French chef Joël Robuchon held during his lifetime. After all, he was named chef of the century by the guide Gault Millau in 1989. But before you get there, I suggest returning to Earth and learning your culinary skills. Then, you need to hire the right people to take care of your restaurant's various aspects. Otherwise, the only thing you will achieve is a Recipe for Disaster!

Recipe for Disaster is a cooking management simulation game developed by Dapper Penguin Studios and published by Kasedo Games on the 5^th of August 2022 on the Steam platform.

The game consists of a few tutorials, a Solo campaign of 10 scenarios and a Free Mode of play. I strongly recommend starting with the tutorials, as they will explain how to play the game, and you will have a bit of fun with it because you have to successfully complete the tasks before you move to the next one.

After finishing the tutorial, I jumped straight into the Scenarios, and after 15 hours of gameplay, I finished 5 scenarios out of 10. Then I jumped on the Free Mode of play where you can change the difficulty level from Easy to Hard, selecting losing conditions and other settings too. Just this alone makes this game highly replayable, which is important these days.

Whatever you choose to play (Scenarios or Free mode of play), you'll start the game with a certain amount of cash, employees, a few winning conditions (including extra bonuses with the scenarios) and some losing conditions. As you would expect, if you achieve all the winning conditions, you will unlock the next scenario, but if you enjoy that current game, you can continue playing to your heart's content. One thing you need to be careful of is not being in the red (in debt) by the end of each day, or it will be game over.

In the Scenarios, you'll start the game with a restaurant, and it will usually be small in the first few Scenarios and have a minimum of kitchen appliances, tables and decorations. If you choose the Free Mode of play, you'll start from scratch with a tiny place and nothing in it. The screen will show the restaurant on a square block of 24 X 24 tiles. The green tiles are the ones you can expand your restaurant on. In Scenarios Mode, these tiles are divided into blocks that you need to purchase to expand your business. So, the first thing you might want to do is to check your menu and the food storage, as well as how many staff you have before expanding your restaurant. You need to ensure you have enough ingredients stored in the kitchen to cook the dishes. Then you can think about building the various aspects of your premises. I love the customisation in this game, and it is pretty much everywhere, from the building aspect to staff uniforms to editing or creating new recipes. It is just amazing! The funny thing I experienced in the first 5 scenarios is that none of my restaurants had any toilets! So, it was important to build a few first before anything else. It will cost you cash to build a wall section, and the same for the floor tiles and any decorations on the external or internal part of each wall section. However, there is no cost for painting the wall, and you can choose from many designs available. Everything else will cost you money, so be wise at the start of the game.

All of the staff have 8 skills and traits. The skills are the same for each employee, and they are based on tasks such as cleaning, cooking on a grill, oven, etcetera. The difference lies in the number attributed to each skill. Any skill with a high number next to it means that the employee is well suited for that task. A high number next to several skills shows that you can allocate the employee to one or more tasks when your restaurant is open. The other thing you need to look at is what each employee doesn't like to do. Make sure not to assign them to a task they don't want, as they will be annoyed quickly and it will take a huge number of experience points for them to level up.

The Recipe Editor is superb; you can create any recipe you want to put on the menu. I personally struggled a bit with it at the start. However, when I got used to it, I realised how good it was, and I created so many crazy recipes and just had fun with it. 

What also makes this game fabulous is the simple interface that’s easy to use. Everything is laid out properly and is easy to access. It is a joy to play this game!

For the actual gameplay, the game is structured on a daily sequence, and you have three types of time speeds, which are Normal, Fast and Rapid. As you open your restaurant, people will start coming in and ordering. Some people will be happy with the food, and others will make suggestions that you can add to your menu. Your patron will judge your establishment on the quality of services, food, decoration and access to the loo. You'll also have critics and health inspectors visiting your premises, and if they give you a great review, your popularity will increase significantly. A negative review will set you back big time. You'll also have events that will occur, such as a fire in the kitchen, a mouse running loose or a clogged toilet! It can also be very tough on staff; some might lose the plot and make a scene in front of your patrons. And other things will happen. It is a well-thought-out game. 

Only one thing, and it is very small, bugged me every time it happened. It's the Camera View movement. In itself, the Camera View is fine, but every now and then it doesn't respond quickly enough. It feels stuck for a few seconds, but then it works fine for ages before it happens again. It's minor, but it is annoying!

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com

Recipe for Disaster Steam Store Page