Going into Team17 and Infinigon Games’ Epic Chef, a life-sim with a cooking focus, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. The life-sim genre is an overwhelming one with tons of shovelware. Luckily, Epic Chef’s intriguing and charming cooking mechanics take what would’ve been yet another game for the sale page and makes it a really fun and unique game to play.

Story

The story revolves around a young man named Zest as he enters the town of Ambrosia. You’ll help Zest make a name for himself as a rising chef in this world as well as build his new mysterious estate up. Along the way, you’ll meet the charming folks of Ambrosia and embark on some interesting missions.

Overall, I think that the story is great. Characters are interesting and pretty funny at times. I would say that there is too much text to press through at times. There’s so often that a joke is made that I think it can waste more time than what it’s worth.

Gameplay

As far as gameplay goes, there’s a pretty great blend that happens between the life-sim aspects and the cooking. You build up your estate with various crops, plants, and machinery to produce the means of which you need for your cooking. Everything done at your little farm has a use in your cooking no matter how small.

I also liked the fact that time moves pretty quickly within the game world, so you won’t have to wait around too long for things to grow. The same goes for any resources you grab from the land that aren’t your own planted things. Mushrooms, trees, and even bird eggs can be farmed over and over after some time has passed through the day.

Cooking is by far my favorite part of Epic Chef because of how uniquely it was done. You basically string together any three items to create your own unique dish. Almost anything you find around the world can be made into something. Each item you throw into your dish has the potential to rack up points, especially when you have the chance to create synergies between items that work together.

Building points is especially important when it comes to participating in Epic Chef battles against your rivals. Here, you need to work with your judge’s pallette and create something for their needs. For example; they may favor a meal with a tomato or using a specific sauce. Sauces are other ways to enhance your dishes as well and will also knab you extra points here and there.

When getting into the town-life aspects like completing missions or just getting to know your neighbors; it’s a fun enough aspect to include. It doesn’t go out of its way to revolutionize anything but I think that was the point as the cooking is the ultimate star of the show.

Audio and Visuals

I’d say that audio is done mostly well. There’s this odd loud humming sound that was happening throughout my playthrough and left me turning off my audio entirely. Visuals are pretty nice but have a bit of roughness when it comes to their outlines. There could’ve been more polish made to the Switch version to make it look as good as it really should.

Replayability

I really think that Epic Chef holds a lot of replayability baked right in (no pun intended). The cooking mechanics are fresh and work hand-in-hand with the farming sim aspects perfectly.

What It Could Have Done Better

On top of the, at times, hokey audio and visuals, there are also too many invisible walls. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game with so many deterrents in it, especially an open-world one like this. There are also some quirks when it comes to controls as well. They just aren’t as responsive as they could be. You’ll have to click a button a couple of times in some cases, and that just gets in the way.

Verdict

Epic Chef is a breath of fresh air when it comes to the life-sim genre. Though it isn’t without its cons, it’s a game that really proves that the genre still has room to grow. The cooking elements as extremely fun to experiment with, and they work cohesively with the already established genre rules. If you love life-sims but want some truly new gameplay elements, look no further than Epic Chef.