Cuisineer Review (Xbox Series X)

STAFF REVIEW of Cuisineer (Xbox Series X)

Wednesday, February 5, 2025.
by Adam Dileva

Every now and then I need what I call a gaming palate cleanser, something out of my normal genres or slower pace to relax. Well, I found my next one with Cuisineer, a cozy roguelite dungeon crawler/restaurant simulator, developed by BattleBrew Productions and published by XSEED Games. Not normally the genre I gravitate towards to, but after a handful of hours I kept feeling compelled to go for one more dungeon run so I can serve more dishes at my restaurant.

Don’t let the ‘dungeon crawler’ description fool you, Cuisineer does have combat, but it’s lighthearted, using shish kabobs, spatulas, a meat tenderizer, and other utensils as weapons. The gameplay loop is quite simple, having you kill animals for food, gathering wood and stone, then serving patrons in your own restaurant to earn money to purchase upgrades, rinse and repeat.

You are Pom, a cat-girl who returns home after receiving a letter from her parents. Upon returning she discovers that her parents are gone, but it’s not as grim as the letter made it sound. Your best friend, Biscotti, finds you inside your parent’s empty restaurant and hands you another letter from her parents stating that they’ve left for a trip around the world. This of course leaves the restaurant in your hands as you opt to give it a try, only to find out shortly after that your parents are massively in debt and now it falls on you to repay it in their absence. Wanting to keep their dream alive, you’ll have to start from the ground up, as they didn’t even leave you any furniture or ingredients in the fridge. It’s a good thing Pom is a natural when it comes to cooking, as it will come down to you and how you run your newly acquired business.

Released on PC a little over two years ago, console players wait hasn’t been for naught. It seems we’ve gotten extra content that was added over time since its release such as new weapons, a wardrobe feature, more recipes and year-round festivals that make the town lively during its celebration and theme based.

Citizens around town will offer you side quests here and there, usually asking you for a specific ingredient or dish. This will usually earn you new recipes, which give your restaurant more offerings for your customers. The town will also have a number of different stores and merchants you will need to use regularly. You can purchase and upgrade Bubble Tea, acting as a way to replenish your health during dungeon runs, spend hard earned coin to upgrade your bags for more carrying capacity, or even buy new or upgrade weapons to help you deal more damage.

One of the more important shops is where you’ll be spending stacks of saved rock and wood to upgrade your restaurant size and capacity, for a cost of course. This is where you’ll also purchase and craft tables, chairs and other important restaurant necessities. All of the upgrades take a hefty amount of materials and coin, so you’ll need to start saving as much as you possibly can. With most items stacking to about 20-30 though, you’re going to have to manage your inventory, fridge, and chest for items gathered while dungeon delving.

This is where I found the first couple hours frustrating, as there’s basically no tutorials at all. Each individual component, from running the restaurant, upgrading, and running dungeons isn’t difficult in itself, but you need to know how they all coincide with one another and the best way to manage all of it. At first you can barely carry any materials or ingredients due to small bags, so you need coin to purchase upgrades. Well, to get coins you need to sell your cooking when you open your restaurant, which takes gathered ingredients, but you run into the same problem of not being able to carry very much at a time initially.

This means you then need to fill your bags, dump them off at your home, then either sell what you can for the remainder of the day or sleep to go for another dungeon run tomorrow, as you’re bound by a time schedule and can’t go do a dungeon or serve customers at night time. Once you prioritize bag space upgrades you can then bring more materials home each day, so I found the best routine for me was doing a dungeon until bags full, sleep, open restaurant for a day, sleep, then repeat.

Running a restaurant is simple in practice with only a few button prompts, but can quickly come chaotic when it’s the lunch or dinner rush. Customers will come in, and if they know what they want and you are able to currently cook it, they’ll seat themselves at one of your tables and order. This is when you need to go over to your stove, pot, cutting board or oven, depending on what you’ve purchased so far, choose the corresponding recipe from the list and press ‘A’ to cook it. In usually 5 seconds or so it will be done and automatically placed on the counter. The customer will then walk up to the counter, grab the food for themselves and go sit back down and eat. After they are done they will go up to the till and wait for you to take the money.

It's quite simple overall, it’s more about making sure you have enough ingredients in the fridge so you can cook your customers’ orders. If they want something you can’t currently offer they’ll get upset and leave. Having enough seats early on when it’s the lunch or dinner rush is an issue too, as customers won’t wait long before leaving if they can’t get a seat. Your restaurant is quite small to start with, so you’ll need to save a lot of money and materials so you can expand and serve more customers, thus earning more each day.

With over 100 recipes to unlock, you’ll be cooking everything from sliced tomatoes, to fried chicken, bowls of rice, fried eggs, pizza, roast chicken, sushi and many more. The more you upgrade your restaurant, the more seating you can place, as well as other cooking stations to create new dishes. Eventually you’ll want to upgrade from standard wooden tables and chairs to something more fancy, as specific customers will then be enticed to come visit, as well as more customers overall. Update your fridge to hold more ingredients and upgrade your cooking stations to be able to queue more dishes at a time.

What becomes a chore though is having to run to every station to start the meal that’s ordered, then going to get the payment when the customers are leaving. There’s no option to hire any staff, so you’re the chef and cashier simultaneously. Thankfully customers go up and get their own food once it’s on the counter, but it becomes chaotic during the rush with every seat occupied, orders coming in and a line of patrons wanting to pay their bill. Once you close shop for the day, you’re given a scorecard of how well you did and how much you earned. The longer you’re open for business the more you’ll earn, which is why I like to rotate my days between dungeons and cooking.

You won’t be able to do very much though if you don’t spend the time and run a dungeon every day or two. Ingredients are used quickly and upgrades can take stacks of materials at a time. There’s no ordering ingredients from a supplier, you must take the fight to chickens and beasts yourself and gather what you can. There is a trader that appears in town from time to time where you can trade one ingredient for another if you’re desperately short on something specific.

Every dungeon run will be slightly different due to being procedurally generated. There’s are a couple of biomes as well, accessible after you pay portions of your debt. That’s right, the reward for paying off your parent’s loan is to find out they actually owe more, but you’re given access to new areas to run dungeons, which net better ingredients, thus better recipes can be made and you can earn more if they are ordered.

Your weapons are utensils and food based, as are elements you can eventually have perks for. There are status effects like Toasty (fire), Frosty (ice), Salty, Sweet, and more. Each weapon and armor piece can have bonus effects to these, so it’s worth the time now and then to try and match your bonus perks if possible for the most damage.

There’s no shortage of enemies, and you can keep going deeper into the dungeons, but you’ll essentially have to end your run and return to town once your bags are full, which is why it’s imperative to try and upgrade that first. The more you can hold the more you can bring back. Your first few weapons are going to seem like you barely do any damage, but once you get a few upgrades or some perks on them, you’ll eventually be able to take out plenty of enemies at once.

Boss battles stand out and can be fun, but it seems random what the rewards are. Sometimes it’s a handful of regular ingredients, other times I got a few rarer ingredients and a weapon or two. There is a roguelite component to it though, because if you die you’ll lose what you’ve collected in your bags that run, so there’s certainly a risk versus reward you need to weigh. You’re able to teleport back to town at any point but it takes a few seconds, so plan ahead.

Aesthetically, all of Cuisineer appears to be hand drawn. It’s very colorful and bright, all of the NPC’s and enemies are well drawn, and there’s plenty of detail in town. The festivals at town during special events are particularly gorgeous. Even the over 100 recipes looks quite tasty with how well they are drawn. The music matches and is upbeat, and I’ve yet to want to mute it even after a few dozen dungeon runs and restaurant serving days.

I actually enjoyed Cuisineer more than I thought I would. Once I got a few upgrades and didn’t have to come running back to town after filling my bags in ten minutes, I started to enjoy it much more. Having a fridge full of ingredients meant I could run my restaurant all day and make some good coin. There’s certainly some pacing issues, an endgame grind, and could use much better tutorials, but playing casually, running a dungeon or serving patrons here and there is quite enjoyable and relaxing.

**Cuisineer was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 7.5 / 10
Gameplay: 7.0 / 10
Visuals: 8.0 / 10
Sound: 7.5 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of Cuisineer (Xbox Series X)

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