Chef RPG

Love the game! I’ll change my review to a positive one once it hits 1.0, even if this particular complaint is addressed or not, because the game is overall worth it. But seeing as there are mostly positive reviews, mine would probably get lost, and I’d really love for the devs to consider adding a time slider. I hate it when, in these types of games, you have to race against the clock. This game is not the worst in that department, but I was getting partially bald while playing, ngl. If it can’t be added, I understand, but it would be lovely to have one; and a proper one, not like in other games where they only add 2 minutes. That’s basically nothing.

As someone who’s played Stardew Valley, Fields of Mistria, and Dave the Diver, I came across a video recommendation for this game and decided to give it a try. The graphics are decent, and really blend in with the overall vibe of the game. The beginner tutorial, however, isn’t very easy to follow. For starters, I had no idea what each NPC does, where their shops are, or which NPCs are important. NPCs you can buy items from get marked with a pink arrow, and quest‑givers get a green arrow — this feels like critical information that’s never explained. What each NPC sells also isn’t fixed; their stock is random each day. I couldn’t figure out who does what, nor where to get the relevant equipment to upgrade my restaurant for making drinks and desserts. I’m currently soft‑locked on the soft‑opening main quest because I have no clue where to buy restaurant furniture. I’ve had to resort to looking up wikis and Steam walkthroughs, and even those don’t cover this part. It would be really helpful if the game told players who sells what and where to find them, or added proper markers for this. I also read in a walkthrough that you can no longer assign skill points past level 40. Knowing I won’t be able to spend skill points after hitting level 40 has made me less motivated to keep playing, even though I haven’t levelled high enough to run into this myself. Farming and foraging feel pretty satisfying. That said, I had no idea which items can be farmed or foraged — for example, I only found out about tea leaves from a walkthrough. Cooking minigames are fine, though I'm not a big fan of them. Fishing is much easier compared to Stardew Valley; catching fish feels very straightforward. For hunting, right now we only have bows and spears. I’d love to see more varied weapon options added further down the line. I’m also not a fan of the current equipment system — I have no idea where to upgrade or craft new gear. The quest system leaves a lot to be desired too. It’s unclear how to progress or what I need to do to unlock new main quests or character side quests. On the time system: I’m just curious. In Stardew Valley you get a reminder that you need to head to bed between midnight and 2 a.m. This game gives no such warning at all. Do I actually need to sleep? Overall, I really hope the devs overhaul the tutorial. So many things are unintuitive for new players, and that has heavily discouraged me from continuing my playthrough. Fingers crossed the full release addresses many of these issues.

Overall a nice novelty: even for Stardew players! TL;DR: A fair starting point for Early Access, with great potential for a cozy game, but hopefully it will become more well-rounded. For now, I'm kind of on the fence about whether you should buy it, mainly due to the fairly significant lack of guidance for the player and the lackluster progression of the city and the NPCs. Firstly, everything I liked: - I love the look of the town. A lot of thought and work has gone into making the market as charming as it is. The details of the buildings and the different levels connected via stairs are chef's kiss. You definitely get excited about this new world, exploring it and its people. - The minigames for cooking (initially). You actually feel like you improve and get into a rhythm with the same two minigames you have to do (to get a decent score for your dish) in the beginning. You get the auto-cook option, but I refrained from using it due to it negatively affecting the dish grade, so I only used it when my cooking level had sufficiently increased (which I think(?) is the reason auto-cook no longer gives a bad grade). - The improvement of the restaurant is something you very quickly become interested in. The new recipes, hiring more staff, increasing profits, and improving the city were all things I was very excited about. - That you could date Aylin. She's so charming. The cons: - Minor issues that are easily solved: NPCs phasing through buildings if you talk to them on their way to a shop; the recipe-development overview icons don't all have descriptions, and the same goes for some of the skill icons; sometimes you're unable to do a minigame for a recipe improvement or character event (the protein shake or birthday cake). Likewise some clipping of dishes when chefs put them down on a table and characters "floating" in the bathhouse. All minor issues that can easily be fixed, so I'm sure they won't be a problem later. Especially the untoggled running of the PC after every single time you interact with anything, which is super bothersome. - Likewise, all the character dialogue is the same, so I've started skipping through a lot of it, which is too bad, but I don't feel like they're saying anything new or that I'm learning anything about them. Likewise, the letters all contain the same "I want to visit" text, without even any gifts or things like that, so I don't see the purpose of them at all. - All the different mechanics are very poorly explained; for example, that cooking in your own kitchen is the main way to get recipes instead of trying to get them from shops. I also didn't realize that you had the option of developing a recipe without using a cooking utensil (because there was a box that hadn't been checked!). - The city upgrades are so lackluster: the most exciting thing was a copper mine. (There comes a barber shop, which is indeed cute, but it offers the same haircuts as in the initial character creation, or a new furniture store, which has about a dozen new items, making it a total letdown compared to the one already existing in the city.) - There is seemingly no increase in NPC shops for clothing, whether through shops or crafting, which is too bad. - Likewise, I need a lot more furniture, floor and also wall options. I think the current options are so limited and boring. - The dating aspect is very boring, for now, and doesn't bring anything to the gameplay as is. - There's no change in ingredients during the seasons, so I don't know if I feel like there's really any reason for them, besides looks. It would be fun to have different ingredients be accessible throughout the year, to also have to accommodate this in a changing menu. And also for example to have specific ingredients or temperatures be "trendy", as it is in real life - very few people want warm soup on a hot summer day for lunch - or have a celebrity write about a certain dish to make it more popular. - You're able to have ingredients sent to your restaurant, but you're left with very little to do to get more. So the late-game daily routine is just to go to the shops every morning to get the expensive ingredients that can't be shipped. - Things aren't highlighted, and you aren't told how to gather them, so collecting Waterleaf or Wild Rice in the swamp is something I only discovered in the last 10 hours of gameplay. - That changing your research stations costs so much! Eg. If you unlock a dish in another cuisine type, you have to spend so many resources changing the kitchen to just upgrade that one dish. Some heavier issues: I feel like I have sort of already finished the game(?). I have endless hours in Stardew, but the lack of character events, the monotone festivals (especially the Spring Festival minigame, which is several rounds of the same boring bet-or-bluff minigame), and the automation of the restaurant make the game feel shallow. It would be great to have more fleshed-out elements. - While automation is, of course, somewhat a goal for the restaurant—from auto-cook to hiring plenty of staff—I now feel useless in my restaurant. I wish the game gave you new problems to tackle, either through staff or customers (e.g., a picky customer who wants a dish cooked only by you), or gave you the option to run service without having to be there yourself (which I doubt is the solution). Minor spoilers incoming regarding later acts: - There is a general lack of guidance regarding what goals you should work toward to progress. Several times I've found myself without a clear direction for advancing the main story, and I still don't know what catapulted me from one act to another or how to initiate the bathhouse story. - Speaking of the bathhouse story, I don't quite see the point of it as it currently stands. I thought it would be different from the restaurant that I already have... but it's the same? - There end up being SOOOO many different minigames, which seemingly don't have a purpose. In Act 2(?) you get a bath bomb minigame... I don't understand at all why it's there, as I still don't know when or how this mechanic is incorporated into the game. - I hoped the bathhouse story would include new furniture, clothes for the PC and staff, maybe the potential geisha performance on a platform, or that the customers desire specific things, just anything to make the space unique. So while written out it might seem like a game I wouldn't recommend, but I've played it a lot so the new-ness has worn off a bit. But I AM super excited for what's to come, and I can tell a lot of love has gone into the game initially, so I just hope it carries into the future <3

As of now, the game is in 0.8. It's nearly finished. The game feels more or less complete as it is though. I have yet to complete the available main story chapters at 77 hours in. If I had rushed things, I probably would have but I've been taking my time. -Story: The narrative is simple and straightforward. You play as a talented young chef who's been gifted the deed to an abandoned restaurant by your former culinary professor. You work hard to revitalize the once great establishment and repay the trust and expectations your mentor has given you. Many of the townsfolk are happy to help you as you get your footing. They also want to see this restaurant make a comeback. -characters: There are a diverse range of colorful characters in the game. Each one holds their own staunch beliefs and principles. There's a cutthroat grandma who hunts wild game for a living. She'll sell you weapons and tools. There's a butcher who is just a tad too invested in his work. There's a goth mechanic that WILL be paid a fair recompense for her services. There's a malfunctioning kind android woman who has a very loose grip on reality. She sells boba tea for a living. -gameplay: Most of the early game will be spent outside the kitchen. You'll hunt, forage, and fish for ingredients while getting acquainted with the town. Because of this, I recommend not putting any starting skill points into gathering or endurance. Those will level up faster than the other two; cooking and social. Your social skill especially will lag behind. If you choose to be an android you should dump all your skill points into social at the start. The game doesn't tell you this but most of your progression is locked behind becoming friends with the NPCs. You won't be able to afford groceries at lower levels which are essential to transitioning from gathering your own ingredients to running the restaurant full time. You'll also not be able to purchase over half the items on a merchant's catalogue until you become friends with them. Midgame is all about cooking. You manage your ingredients, your staff, and your restaurant layout during your off hours and cook for your customers during service. The cooking minigames are engaging and interesting and the game rewards you for choosing to play them. You can however, choose to use the autocook feature which will lower your average tips but let you skip the minigames. Cooking also comes with the research mechanic. You can alter recipes to use an ingredient you have too much of or add one that will raise the price of the dish by multiple times. Each ingredient also comes with it's own flavor modifiers that can influence how the customer reacts to the food. I very much enjoy the concept of being free to alter the menu to my liking. There's a clear and tangible difference to my choices that aren't strictly governed by the games presets. The endgame content is still in development and I'm unsure of where I'm at in terms of the complete narrative so I won't make a comment on it. -setting: A rundown seaside town with a diverse ecosystem featuring a swamp, a series of beaches, a forest, a volcano, and a jam packed downtown area. The timeline is in the future some 80 years from now. Androids are common place. The architecture is reminiscent of a neo-Asian style. Along with sci-fi elements there are also ghosts and other supernatural entities being mentioned. -production value: The music is interesting. It gives a feeling of a call to adventure. It heightens the experience and adds to my drive when playing the game. It features mostly techno style. The art style is mostly pixelated. It's charming and has character but doesn't break any standards. With the way the sprites are designed it can be difficult to tell them apart. I sometimes lose track of my own character among my staff while managing my restaurant. The UI and HUD are decent but some parts seem unfinished or simply don't make sense. The framerate can drop dramatically while multiple things are in motion. This happens primarily while gathering, farming, and during service hours. I feel like the primary reason for this is probably due to items having their own physics. Each time you pick a plant, a sprawling number of items pop out in an explosion. Each one has it's own hitbox that can collide with map barriers and the player. It eats up my RAM and feels unnecessary. -bugs/complaints: Crashes have been rare but I believe they may become more frequent as I scale up my restaurant. Animals will sometimes get stuck on certain objects. This is especially true in the mines. They also occasionally clip through walls. Dropped items can also clip through walls or be dropped in an unreachable area. The process of collecting dropped items is time consuming, tough on the frame rate, and frustrating. It's too easy to accidentally click a dialogue option while attempting to speed up the chat window of NPCs. There's no way to repurchase what has been sold to a vendor if you accidentally sell an item you didn't mean to. There is no way to easily check an item's value nor an easy way to know whether it can be sold and to whom. There is no item shipping box like in Stardew Valley so simply dumping your unneeded items is very difficult without taking a loss. This is especially problematic because you have very limited inventory space in your home and restaurant. The targeting system is finnicky and difficult to get a read on. Combat feels especially clunky. There's too much RNG related to non guaranteed items. getting enough seeds for a crop is a gamble. Amethyst is especially rare despite it being needed for some fairly early game machines. There's no way to get another composter. -overall impressions: There are a lot of things I like about this game but also a lot of things that frustrate me or need some polish. because it's still in development and the devs have been consistent with their updates I'll give it some slack. It's worth the money even as it is currently. I do very much hope for further improvements though. 8/10

Overall pretty good. Was fun the first 20 hours. Now I see the lack of progression. Lack of polish. I never take the time to write reviews like this so clearly I care about this game. I was fired up at first when playing it. It's well done for the most part. There's lots to do. Some great ideas. A good addition to the farming life sim genre. But also has parts lacking polish. Some bugs. And plenty of quality of life fixes and minor issues here and there. My main interest was the restaurant management and it was lacking IMO. Unrealistic little weird things here and there. So this skews my review I guess. Great ideas in the game. I like leveling up and picking new skills, cooking mini games is a fun idea and being able to toggle to auto cook is nice, unlocking new recipes through the ingredient puzzle thing is cool, character design in diverse and it good art, music is good. I liked that backpack management was pretty loose. But also maybe too loose. Easy hording. I think some of the game is a bit too easy in that regard. Makes it have a bit less weight and pressure. Days are decently long, it seems you can water your crops, hit the mines, hit the shops in town and still have a long restaurant shift every day. This can be good depending what you're looking for but with how easy the core restaurant part of the game is it can leave foraging fishing and mining to feel a bit pointless a couple hours into the game. I could easily just buy everything I needed very early into the game it seemed due to restaurant making money. I only sold things I foraged a few times very early game so I could buy the ingredients I needed to run the restaurant, from then on I was almost buying out every shop most days. Rich. Too easy. Now for things I wish would feel better and other grievances. I wish the Restaurant Manager part was more fleshed out. The game is called Chef RPG and the mini cooking games are a cool fun idea but the restaurant management leaves a lot to be desired. I played weirdly by not doing the main story quest early and got right into running the restaurant and in seemingly a few days I was able to start buying everything I needed from shops and hire staff and had a restaurant that would constantly fill up. Continually. Non stop. They never stop coming in. You have to close then finish the next 3 hours of cooking all the customer's orders that are still there. Staff is so slow. Guess this isn't the games focus. I wish it was. But the lack of progression in running a business and weird quirks of how the wait staff work and orders coming up and each customer being a single person ( no table sizes) and they each order multiple things but only consume 1 at a time even drinks and are in your restaurant for like 4 hours each. Mining is boring. Only basic animals in there than don't even attack you. Same mine every day. No progression just run through the same shape and cut a few rocks out of the walls. Music is great but there aren't that many different tracks and the transition from one to another sometimes isn't that smooth or natural with the visual changes. Grievances: -(minor) first thing to annoy me was the liquid physics. All liquids feel the same and are like slushie consistency. I got used to it with all glasses except the martini glass. Even slow pouring in the martini glass it will climb the walls and pour over even though the bottom of the glass is not full. Lumping up as if you were pouring sticky gravel or something. -so your restaurant can prepare up to 6 items at a time. Why if you make a coffee for example does it have to go to the exact customer who ordered it? That customer might be drinking their first drink still so you can't deliver it to them. But There may be a new customer who orders coffee. Let me give that new customer the other coffee! -Customer ordering in general. They are in the restaurant for hours and hours because they consume one of their multiple items ordered at a time. -Some food items like sushi are prepared in weird ways. Sushi is prepared by sloppily throwing all the items on a cutting board and chopping them with a big knife. Not as satisfying as more accurate ways to prepare the relevant dish - Employees shouldn't pick up a prepared item and then immediately go to sleep to break - (minor) when you try to water a crop with empty watering can it makes a pretty sound/animation as if you were getting hurt. - (minor) restaurant employees just permanently exist in the restaurant. sitting there creepily. - Why is the restaurant instantly slammed constantly at all hours of all days right from the start of the game. Seems weird. One again, no progression. - UI clicking around is a bit annoying. Sometimes there are multiple arrow buttons in the UI and while using a controller can be annoying to press a direction to navigate. Especially when putting in a new hire in the restaurant. In order to put the new hire into the shift you have to press left 5 times down 2 times and then click their character image. Why? I just hired them. Let me put them good and quick. BUGs -can't select quick travel if a quest character icon is close to the quick travel icon -Brewing tutorial images are all shifted off 1 (ex. text of part 1/4 has the image that should go with text 4/4) -UI bug when I was asked to force close restaurant or not. After backing out UI was gone. Had open menu then back out to have it all appear again Pretty good life sim casual game. But a good amount of quirks still that I think should be polished out. But it's early access... we will see how much updating they do now that player count is quite down.....

Minigames used for the cooking are not well advertised in store page. I absolutly hate ddr style minigames (click the correct key while they fall past). Didn't get far enought to not recomment or recomend, but beware it has tons of these "mini games" that just ruin it for me. Marking not recommended if you don't like random ddr style minigmes to do many tasks. Update: Yes I know there is auto complete, but you have to unlock the auto complete. There are other very clunky aspects to the game also that just make it unenjoyable for me. It had promise, but falls very short for me, it's nothing like what I was looking for even though it seemed like it would be based on it's store page.

loving the gameplay and the intense hunting, lmao. it got me squealing. the mini games when cooking are cute too. the research actually got me using my brain, lol. i’m excited to find more recipes! the only thing is... why do I have to keep clicking "run" every single time I forage or hunt? i’ve gone to the hospital multiple times because I keep forgetting to click the run button TT

I am only reccomending this game because it is decently fun. It has a lot of problems sadly It took me a while to really understand what feels wrong about this game, but I think the simple answer is that it feels so cold in tone. There is a massive stretched out sequence explaining your characters backstory that should have taken a single cutscene. Meanwhile you don't really bond with the NPCs well and all of their missions are either fetch quest or "do x" quests. There isn't a ton of time to really read into the characters backstories or their troubles. They just TELL you their struggles via dialogue and that's it. I hate to compare it to stardew valley since this game isn't trying to be like that exactly... But in stardew the game took it's time to introduce you to the characters and watch cutscenes about them and learn about them. You didn't get fetch quests, just a little 5 minute cutscene where your character interacts with them. I can't name more than 5 characters in chef rpg. It's a very lonely feeling game and it doesn't give me a lot of opportunities to really know and bond with anyone. Hazel is RIGHT NEXT TO ME and I only know her as the silly tea girl with broken brain. You don't even learn about hazels backstory naturally. She TELLS you it within the first minute of meeting you. If you don't care about relationships in games this is for you. I implore the devs to work on the content that still exists rather than expanding. It needs a bit of work.