Hail To The Chef: Cook, Serve, Delicious Demo

Games have taught me quite a lot about cooking and running a restaurant, mostly that it's all about time management. It's absolutely fine to rush from cleaning a blocked toilet to kneading burger meat into a patty as long as it's all done efficiently. Cook, Serve, Delicious (!) has an admirable name. I expected another verb at the end, making a full sequence of actions, but why say 'eat' when you can shout 'delicious'? The game is from the makers of The Oil Blue and contains a basic management metagame wrapped around a core of juggling orders, preparing and purchasing ingredients, and trying not to become overwhelmed by gluttonous demands. There's a demo and even a freeware game of old that this appears to be based on.

I've liked games about food ever since Pizza Tycoon somehow grabbed my attention. I was a teenager who leafed past all the new warfighters in the game mags and saw a picture of pepperoni being placed on a pizza, and thought that looks interesting. I was genuinely disappointed when I found out there was a whole gangster aspect to the game because I was just interested in experimenting with toppings.

Cook, Serve, Delicious is out now at $8.95 and is also on Steam Greenlight.