Battle Chef Brigade

My complements to the chefs at Trinket studios. Battle Chef Brigade is an action/puzzle/ game that is greater than the sum of it's parts. The game is broadly made of 3 distinct sections which one their own are fine if a little shallow but when combined -appropriately enough like ingredients in a dish- elevate the core gameplay loop: The first is the fighting stage, in this first phase you gather ingredients in a basic side-scrolling platformer action game. Enemies aren't particularly difficult and the stages are small, but that's because you're always on a timer. Next you combine ingredients in a Puyo-puyo bubble drop game. It's not as complex as other games in genre, but you choose pans to cook in with different fusion properties which give you the edge against your opponent. Finally this is all wrapped up in a serve-the-customer context in which orders come in for certain ingredients, types of gems and techniques. Points are awarded not only on your dish's complexity but on how well you meet these conditions. On their own these would be insufficient but the point is that because you're always switching between the 3 none of them have time to get boring and each of them offer reprieve from the others. When hunting gets to be boring, do some bubble-matching and order planning for a bit until you need to kill more stuff, rinse and repeat. If the systems were more complex it would likely only hurt the game as the mental load would become unpleasant. As someone who isn't very good at Puyo-puyo I found normal mode to be pleasantly challenging, I only failed once or twice but there were some real nail-biters. As for story and style, the game is charmingly written, beautiful to look at and isn't overlong. The characters are fun and the story maintains a quick pace which never gets bogged down too much. I highly recommend Battle Chef Brigade.

You know the game is good when there's a trial by cooking. Super fun, super chill game. It really deserves a sequel.

We have a main course being a puzzle game with an interesting take on the match 3 formula. A sprinkle of decent, though sometimes a bit wonky, combat. A decent serving of an interesting world, sauced up with a beautiful hand drawn art. And a side of, well, an interesting cast of side characters. All of this coming together for a nice and delectable feast. I'm not a fan of match 3 games but the loop of getting ingredients (combat) in order to cook (match 3) makes it a nice balance between the two. Having these two aspects of gameplay with only a limited time per match, makes for a slight challenge in time management. I felt like the writing was also okay, nothing to write home about. But it did make me care for our cast of characters at the very least. And the worldbuilding, though very surface level, was also intriguing enough. The inclusion of voice acting also definitely made the characters come to life, as well as the beautiful hand drawn art. Overall, the whole package does come together quite nicely.