Cuisineer was provided by XSEED Games for review. Thank you!
Cuisineer is a game that tries to incorporate a ton of different elements all into one and attempts to make an engaging gameplay experience. It takes top-down views, hack-and-slash combat, roguelike exploration, and restaurant management and puts it all into a cutsy, adorable package that includes vibrant colors and a cartoon aesthetic. While I had my doubts at first, as I usually see games fall behind when they try to do too much, Cuisineer succeeds in everything it sets out to do.
The game generally revolves around two aspects: Getting ingredients through roguelike dungeons and managing your restaurant to earn money. Starting with the former, you will go to different locations, each with different enemies, and go out to get ingredients, both for cooking and for upgrading your restaurant. The dungeons are all procedurally generated, so each visit will be different than the last. You will utilize different types of weapons, each having different abilities and powers to chain together elements to demolish all who stand before you.
While it does feel a little simple at times, the combat has a lot of charm to it and I found myself losing time as I kept going through dungeon after dungeon. It's one of those games where the simple way to go is the best way to go, and I couldn't be happier.
Then, we have the restaurant management. At the beginning of the game, this can feel like a bit of a slow, obnoxious grind as you start with 1 table and are restricted to only putting one stool there, but this picks up as you go along. Once you start getting more tables, expanding the space your restaurant has, and getting more tables and bowls to make more intricate food, it becomes significantly better. I enjoy being able to customize my restaurant and all the furnitire placement, as well as go back and forth making the food.
There are shops outside of your restaurant to get new equipment for combat, furniture, and boba tea (healing items), and even one to upgrade and augment your gloves, armor, and weapons. The gameplay loop is addicting and overall phenomenal, but I do wish it was a bit better on the Steam Deck.
Cuisineer is playable on the Steam Deck and I did enjoy my time with it, but I can't help but feel like it could have been better. The performance is flawless when managing your restaurant and roaming around the city, but going into the procedurally generated dungeons is where performance starts to decline. When running through dungeons, I would regularly get instability in the framerate and would sometimes dip to 35. This happened regardless of the Proton layer or framerate limit I set.
Other than this, the game runs without a hitch and works well.
As for accessibility, there isn't a whole lot that can be changed, There is vibration intensity, difficulty, language, toggling an Aim Indicator, and changing audio settings, but that's about it.
Cuisineers supports 16:10 resolutions, which means there will be no black bars around the screen, and there is controller and cloud save support.
Cusineer is a fantastic blend of roguelike dungeon crawling and restaurant management that hits all the right spots. The combat is simple, but feels great, while taking care of the restaurant and patrons to make money can be a ton of fun. It is a bit slow in the beginning, but it gets quite good once you start to upgrade. I do wish combat was a bit smoother and didn't have framerate hitches, but it doesn't take away from how great of a game it is to play!
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Cuisineer is a game that shines in its variety, even with a slow start. Though, there are some compromises to play on the Steam Deck.
