PREVIEW : Recipe for Disaster (PC)
Recipe for Disaster is a restaurant related business management and social simulation game in which you play as an unskilled but ambitious head chef pursuing your longtime dream of becoming an internationally recognised restaurateur. You’ll be faced with meticulously developing restaurants, employing and managing the correct employees, customising food menus, and experimenting with ingredients to create delectable new meals that will amaze your clients during your adventure.
It will be anything but simple to carve a path through the highly competitive, fast-paced, and stress-inducing world of the food-service industry. After all, this is a people-centered company, so keeping everyone happy, engaged, and fulfilled will take nothing short of a miracle! Micromanagement abilities are put to the test in Recipe for Disaster. Players must build and edit a restaurant as if they were a real business owner, as well as hire personnel, create a menu, and manage client expectations. Players must achieve objectives to move to the next level despite all of this.
There’s a reason most restaurants fail within the first five years of their existence. Because of the high expense, it is one of the most difficult occupations to obtain. I’m not unfamiliar to the core tenets of maintaining a restaurant going, having worked in the fast-food industry. Unlike other businesses where customers can simply return a product for a refund or replacement, diners must also ensure that customers do not have food allergies, follow safety guidelines, and handle high waste disposal costs. Never mind that your equipment could break down in a multitude of ways. It may not appear to be very much, however when you engage in the foodservice sector, there are always a million things to think about.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, Recipe for Disaster is all you’d expect it to be. Players must complete numerous tasks while also giving attention to small specific of running a restaurant. The game starts with a simple level in which the goal is to serve a set number of customers. At this stage of the game, the restaurant doesn’t really have much happening for it in regards of menu items or challenging circumstances, but your staff is inexperienced. Because they are lousy cooks, they set everything on fire.
After spending some time with the early access game, I’ve discovered that I’m weirdly attached to it. As they fight fires in the kitchen, decorate their dining room, and battle with personnel to perform their jobs, these gameplay elements assist the player in creating the best restaurant experience possible. In any case, I had a great time playing the game.
However, despite Recipe for Disaster’s excellent foundation, there are a few minor defects and quality-of-life aspects that I would like to see rectified or added.
For one thing, the construction menu could use a little more diversity. The Cook, Serve, Delicious line of cookery games shines at this, rewarding players with décor and improvements. Players earn money at the end of each level, which they can use to buy recipes or other items. While I appreciate that gamers can construct their own magnificent recipes, the decorative options left me wanting more. Recipe for Disaster, with exception of management games like The Sims, only has one toilet choice. Instead of a toilet stall being its own object, the creators have chosen to allow users to attach a stall door to a wall. When dealing with limited space, having a little extra options in the build menu would be fantastic.
Another little gripe I have with the build menu is how difficult it can be to use at times. For example, because there wasn’t one available, I constructed one for a customer (a topic I’ll get to later). It’s not until much afterwards that I realised I’d put the ceiling light on the wrong side of the wall! Not only did the visitors not object, but I found the lack of camera control to be inconvenient at times. Furthermore, in many nations, sit-down restaurants are required to offer public restrooms or they will not be allowed to open. Keep that in mind at all times.
Finally, as far as I’m aware, players cannot establish a break place for employees. Outside, there is usually a designated bench where employees can take a rest. The issue is that players are unable to construct additional seats for the crew. They also can’t set up a table because as game considers tables to be customer-only. In this scenario, I believe what the game needs is a sense of realism.
The build menu isn’t the only little gripe I have with the game, by the way. There were a few instances where personnel sat in the midst of the dining room without a server stand or a pay register. In addition, there were occasions when the employees would sit in the washroom and do nothing! Not only did this annoy the customers, but I also saw that the workers would occasionally return to the same spot. Yes, we can rearrange the workers, but the consumers would be unconcerned with the existence of others until they had departed.
Recipe for Disaster is visually appealing, with a cartoonish aesthetic and a simple user interface. Characters differ in personality, as well as their likes and dislikes. Players can see what their employees are thinking, what their customers want, and manage their business accordingly at any time. It offers a decent selection of wallpaper colours and textures. Plus, for a brief period of time, when the kitchen starts burning, it is comic gold.
The UI design is what actually makes Recipe for Disaster a fantastic game. While in the course of a level, players can go to build mode to change features. They can also designate cleaning areas both inside and outside the restaurant, making the game feel more genuine. In fact, there is a sliding bar that can be adjusted to indicate how dirty a spot must be before a staff person will go.
Everything, including the smooth finish, is under the authority of the players. For an Early Access project like Recipe for Disaster, the base is excellent. Visually, the game is appealing.Gameplay that is well-balanced and provides players with a wealth of information. It has a roadmap that includes things like a bar area and Twitch integration in the future. Staff progresses throughout time. They get benefits depending on the most often performed job function, which I think is a terrific addition. The restaurant’s physical structure is a bit annoying. The size of the user interface cannot be changed. This could be a problem with availability. However, according to the developers, a sandbox or free play mode is being actively worked on. Recipe for Disaster is a great way to waste time that I really enjoyed. It comes with everything you’ll need to have a fun and difficult gaming experience. I had a lot of fun handling the jobs, designing my restaurant, and figuring out what clients wanted.
REVIEW : Summertime Madness (PS5)
