Chef RPG Reviews

I played this game for over 200 hours and got every achievement. It was really fun until I decided I wanted to try out all the leveling perks. If you use the Vending machine perk and buy more than a couple vending machines, all your neighbors make nasty comments towards you almost every time you talk to them. Resetting your perks does not make this go away and it really feels like it ruined all my hard work.. That kinda ruined the game for me and I don't want to play it anymore because of that.

This game is in early access, but it has a lot of promise so far. It's very much "Stardew Valley if you opened a restaurant instead of a farm", with a similar town, similar day cycle, etc. The first few chapters are really fun, as you learn the town, unlock recipes, meet characters, flesh out the story. There's a ton of promise. The restaurant is of course the main aspect of the game. You learn recipes, you spend most of your day walking around town completing quests, buying ingredients, or foraging for wild ingredients, then you head to the restaurant and open service. You can hire waitstaff and chefs, but you'll be in there too. The different cooking stations are each a different minigame, some more fun than others. They do get really tedious after a while, but mercifully the game gives you the option to switch them off. Where I think the game needs polish right now is in later content. The game starts asking a lot of you for such a short day cycle, and a lot of it's not very fun, it's tedious. [spoiler]The Tea/Bath House is where I started losing interest, trying to run two restaurants at once but only being able to run one at a time was not enjoyable.[/spoiler]. I'm confident that there will be a lot more content, but that particular aspect just sucked the fun right out of the game for me. The only other complaints I have are minor things that can be fixed, like inventory management issues and a couple of minor bugs. I hope they overhaul the whole fridge/menu issue; there needs to be a shopping list function, and the inventory should be based around the menu, not the menu based on what's in the fridge. Most real restaurants have a set menu, and then you stock the cooler accordingly. You don't just throw whatever you have into the fridge and go "okay what can we make with this". Overhaul that and this game will be so much smoother. Also why is everyone in the town so rude? Like everyone is just MEAN until you work up a friendship with them, and even then they're flat. But all of the random townsfolk who aren't actual characters are bizarrely rude and hateful toward you. They'll insult you for no reason, and it's really off-putting. But like I said. Early Access, plenty of time to change things and improve and listen to community feedback. Right now this game is a solid B-, but I think with some polish this game could absolutely be an A+ game.

this is a really fun game. the characters feel unique and fun. I mostly use controller but there are a couple of things that are easier done with mouse and keyboard, such as decorating and hiring staff. My favorite part so far was Anna Mae's "Vegan" party for her friends. i did a triple take at that part. ill give it a more proper review someday.

A good restaurant manager in the style of stardew valley and traveller's rest. It's still in early access but there is already a lot of contents.

this game is super fun i had to get used to the pixels moving difrently than other games but you get used to it in time due to it being a early acces it does have me rooting for more one teeny detail tho reminders are a tad agressif when you run out of water the screen shakes hard and lowkey growls at you saying "HEY DUMBASS YOU NEED TO REFIL" and it startles me every time lol other reminders to so im peacefully picking herbs and berries and then BOOM same with fishing but for the rest its already an amazing game with fun mini games and an inteseting story

Chef’s RPG mixes cooking, exploration, and light RPG elements in a charming little package. You play as a traveling chef trying to revive a seaside town’s food scene — by foraging ingredients, battling wild creatures, and whipping up tasty dishes. It’s cozy, quirky, and full of flavor. If you enjoy games like Stardew Valley but want a culinary twist, this one’s worth a taste. Just don’t play hungry! 😋🔪🌿

No it's not Stardew Valley. The game is fine but won't recommend it for now. The game flow feels tedious and some actions are slow. You gather ingredients, hunt animals, and maybe go to the mines if you want or i don't know open your restaurant? Maybe you want to talk to these locals that are as interesting as a tissue paper. Some locals are fine but there are some that are just a waste of space, some don't even have a sprite or relationship meter despite being locals. And the ones you can befriend and date? well, some look like shit sadly and some are boring. If you want good NPCs then maybe try Rune Factory 4, at least that game doesn't treat their NPCs like some boring coconut husk. There's also this poor excuse of a farming side-thing, it feels like a waste of time, I hope they remove farming instead of forcing it on us. You'd think with all these androids around you'll have a hose or something that would speed up farming activities but nope you're still stuck with a freaking watering can with it's slow animation. I'll give it some time to improve but for now it's kinda meh.

It wasn't made clear to me when I first found this game, so I'm saying it here: this is a Stardew like. It's different enough to not be a direct clone, but it is still all about farming and mining and foraging, the restaurant management aspect really feels secondary. It's fun as is, but there are a lot of UI clashes that make gameplay bumpy (can't use the cursor to interact when you unlock the ability to scan objects for information, as an example). It looks like the dev is making improvments still, so I assume that I'll be able to make this review more solid in a few months

my first issue with the game is that i cant keep the restaurant open while i do other things. why is there no sort option for my inventory??????

[h1] Overall opinion and pros of the game: [/h1] I’m a passionate food and culinary culture enthusiast as well as a Stardew Valley veteran, who came to this game with an empty space in my heart, yearning for a game in a similar style to Stardew Valley (but significantly different enough from it) in a world where games I’ve played for years in its wake most often leave me frustrated and my patience strained. I believe Chef RPG is the game my heart has been searching for all this time. (Quick note: it is definitely different from Stardew Valley in significant ways). This game has genuinely improved my quality of life, and my mental health while I’m gaming. The style and aesthetic design of the game are phenomenal, the food and recipe options are exciting and culturally diverse, and the cooking minigames are fun (maybe in epic and legendary levels in the future they could be *really* fast and more clearly skill-dependent, but that’s okay). I found the uncovering of new recipes always exciting, and the restaurant services enjoyable with all components that I’ve autonomously crafted myself across all aspects (my menu made from recipes I found during the game, what drinks are featured which I have brewed myself, how I visually designed my restaurant, who I hired + how many, the amount of tea stations for happier and less tired workers with a tea recipe of my design, etc.). You get a lot of design autonomy within the game, (including your character's design, clothing, and later, option to change hairstyles yay!), and you can really make your restaurant your own with a decent range of options in furniture to choose from. The design of the furniture which are redeemable from the bathhouse peony tickets is so special, very fitting for rewarding the late-game player. I really like the diversity of the NPCs and each of their character designs, giving them their favorite gifts, especially on their birthday, and learning more about their lives. I really do love the culinary dimensions of this game very much, literally laughed or gasped in excitement at certain references, and I think the cooking minigame that felt most like cooking and therefore was my favorite was the grill. I truly always feel happy after closing out this game after easily playing for multiple hours on end, and that speaks to how multidimensional and wonderfully designed this game is. Even with the critiques to follow, you absolutely should try this game. I have been recommending it to many of my friends, certainly all the ones who adored Stardew Valley, but especially to those who haven’t played a peaceful, non-stressful game in a long time. As I hear my friends seething at their various games in the Discord VC, I am having a really nice time on Chef RPG. [h1] Cons: [/h1] [h2] Smallest critiques first: [/h2] It’s very enjoyable gathering ingredients from the decently big map, but I hope to see the map further expanded someday alongside seasonal-specific produce which would cultivate a perspective of a chef who wants to change their menu seasonally. It could be interesting to add a time management aspect to the cooking minigames, where the player must oversee the readiness of several moving parts, each operating on its own schedule (have you ever heard of the phone app Lumosity? There’s this coffee game, “Trouble Brewing,” that has a challenging time management component and something like that in the cooking minigames would enrich the games and simulate the pressure of running a restaurant service). There’s nowhere to get plant roots in winter besides the greenhouse, so I slept through all of winter one year in order to get plant roots in the spring to make the crystal fishing rod. Where are the recipes that use ginseng, caviar, saffron, truffle? Are they only meant to enhance existing recipes? I wanna craft more clothes at Milo’s :( [h2] My biggest critiques: [/h2] This game is, arguably, not very challenging. I don’t think the hunting component of this game to obtain meat for recipes (pheasant, elk, boar) needs any adjusting and it’s a nicely proportional level of challenge to the rewards. However, big in-game achievements like defeating the creature master boss was not difficult, catching the giant-sized fish was not difficult at all as the only thing you need is the easily-obtainable equipment and Oceaneer skill unlocked, so there’s a challenge ceiling. I think this ceiling limits the game from being, to whatever extent, rewarding and meaningful to the subset of gamers that seek to hone their skills, make mistakes until they succeed, and achieve something hard-earned. I think Stardew Valley’s skull caverns in the desert and volcano dungeon on Ginger Island provided that opportunity to this subset of players, but there’s nothing in Chef RPG that can do that. The critic plot point was the only notably frustrating thing I ran into within the game. [spoiler] A critic (Lucius) will come by your restaurant and review it. You have (very thankfully) the option to host regular services at your restaurant until you deem that you are fully ready for the critic service, so I took that opportunity to get my staff to a level I was accepting of, but it takes a while for chefs to level up. When Lucius orders food, the meals get assigned to each of your various chefs automatically. This was frustrating when I discovered this because my restaurant may not even end up being judged by my own skills in the cooking minigames. I restarted this day over until I cooked just one of his meals, which boosted the final score of the dish quality of his food. I understand there’s a logic to that design—in real life you must judge the restaurant by all of its parts, including your weaker chefs—but I did multiple runs of the critic service where I did not get the opportunity to cook a single one of his meals due to the meal assignments. [/spoiler] The romance aspect of the game is really rudimentary right now and very underwhelming in the writing as it currently stands. There’s nothing to experience within the romance of this game except to “go on dates,” which initiate enjoyable cutscenes, as well as some new lines whenever you find and interact with the character in the future, and that’s about it. I wish there were more of a developmental progression of relationships via more cutscenes and weighted choices for the player. What if whenever you never talk to your NPC after your date they send you letters in the mail asking if everything’s okay, if they did something wrong, and there’s a consequence in the relationship ranking? What if there are cutscenes where they visit your house/restaurant and ask you to cook something for them there, which advances the storyline depending on the success of the dish you made? What if the game presents you with 3 options of dishes to make for your date, and even if you make the dish really well, it ended up being their least favorite food, where you then get the option to do the cutscene again (or not, if the player chooses) until you find their favorite food? What if the NPC invites the player over for a tour of their residence and talks about their life in more detail, and the player gets more lore about their NPC? What if there were a date opportunity to take a walk through Ashy Swamp and then an elder boar starts charging at you and your date, where you have to defeat the elder boar on the spot, the success of which advances (or not) the relationship? These are angles and ways that I thought of that could enrich the romance aspect of the game, for whatever that’s worth. [h3] Ultimately, [/h3] this is now one of my favorite all-time games ever, thank you very much to all of the developers of Chef RPG for such a wonderful and sweet game. You guys have genuinely improved my quality of life. <3 I’m excited for any new patches or to try the game again from scratch in the future. --Kimmy Su