There’s plenty of fantastic demos currently available to play as part of Steam Next Fest, but Cuisineer, the roguelite meets restaurant management RPG where you play as a catgirl, has me in a chokehold.
Developed by BattleBrew Productions, this adorable dungeon-crawler sees you play as Pom, a young adventurer who becomes a restaurateur. You return to your hometown of Paell to manage your parents’ restaurant, only to find it closed for business, empty, and very in debt. In order to pay the debts, you must re-open the restaurant, although getting ingredients won’t involve a simple trip to the market: you’ll be dungeon-delving to get the freshest produce for your customers (described as dungeon-to-table eating).
I’ve been excited to get my hands on Cuisineer since seeing it at the PAX Aus 2022 Rising indie showcase, where the line to try the demo was excruciatingly long (turns out I’m not the only one that saw the character art and went feral). Now, a new demo is available to try for free on Steam until June 26, and it’s absolutely worth checking out.
If you’re a Diner Dash fan, enjoy Hades, or just kind of like wandering around a little village and meeting the residents, Cuisineer is a fun mashup of multiple genres that, from the demo, just seems to work.
While on a grocery run (read: fighting sentient plants and giant chickens), you wield cooking utensils to cut enemies down in procedurally generated maps, all the while filling up your inventory with ingredients to take back home and cook into one of many dishes for your demanding customers. You’ll also have the chance to unleash Salty, Sour, Sweet, Bitter, Umami, Frosty and Toasty powers (which translate to various elemental powers and other effects) on rivals as you explore.
There are over 100 different recipes to make from around the world, and they’re all beautifully (and deliciously) illustrated. As you progress, you can improve your kitchen, slowly growing from the all-but-abandoned food safety violation you return home to into a thriving restaurant.
To top it all off, Cuisineer leans into classic RPG elements with a cast of townsfolk and merchants that you can befriend and accept quests from. Not only will you get some cute interactions out of them, but they’ll also give you loot and new recipes if you can fulfil their requests.
The Cuisineer demo is available now for a limited time only, so if you’re already dreaming of cutting down giant chickens with a really big wooden spatula as an adorable catgirl, now’s your chance. There’s currently no set official release date for the game, but boy howdy, I hope it’s very soon.
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