Kitchen Crisis Review (PC)

Aside from that one time when I “accidentally” left a pizza box in an air fryer and somehow set fire to a kitchen counter, I haven’t had any major issues with cooking. Scratch that — I did, at some point in my childhood, burn my palm on a dimly lit electrical hob, which ultimately led me to believe that the culinary arts were pure evil, and that, despite my best efforts to make beans on toast in a fit of rage, I wasn’t the all-seeing chef that I thought I was. Times have since changed, and to say that I’m suddenly all the wiser when it comes to utilizing utensils to cook hearty meals is, to some extent, true. It’s a good thing, too, because Team Samoyed has just this moment released its “survival-cooking” sim, Kitchen Crisis. Cue the PTSD, I guess?

Kitchen Crisis takes the organic world of cooking to a new level, mainly by introducing oddly thematic survival elements that revolve around—you guessed it—kitchen appliances on the fritz, and a band of unruly and annoyingly impatient guests who’d soon rather wipe the floor with you than settle for a dish that’s scarcely palatable. In short, you, the involuntary chef, must work towards a tight deadline whilst under the watchful gaze of several alien captors, all of whom share an undying love for Michelin-quality cuisines and nothing else. Surprise surprise, if you fail to cook a dish that doesn’t leave a lasting impression on the tongue, then you may just wind up in the external vacuum of some extraterrestrial spaceship, or worse — reduced to pot wash duty. No pressure there, then.

If you are keen to get your hands dirty, and aren’t entirely sure whether or not Kitchen Crisis will suffice, then be sure to read on.

Order Up

Kitchen Crisis asks a simple question: what would you do if you were abducted by an alien species and forced to cook five-star courses for a troupe of tempered and, for good measure, slightly sadistic troublemakers? If, of course, you’re reluctant to take the oven for a spin, then you’re probably going to wind up as somebody’s post-meal delight — like a mint, or a shot of espresso, or something along those lines. If, however, you’re all for the idea of bending over backwards to quench the thirsts of those annoyingly inpatient guests, then you might just stand a chance of acquiring a permanent fixture in the kitchen. That is, of course, until the floor tiles collapse and the hob goes up in flames.

The good news is that, while the game does center itself around the culinary arts and the process of crafting high-quality dishes for clients, the actual responsibilities of a kitchen hand don’t necessarily involve, well, cooking. As it turns out, mixing ingredients together to create mouth-watering dishes isn’t in your job description; the lackeys who occupy the floor are in charge of all that nonsense, funnily enough. Instead, you, playing the part of the overseer, must make the appropriate preparations before each shift begins and essentially allocate certain appliances to certain tasks; for example, to make sure that your team is performing efficiently and to the letter, you must first organize each appliance to suit a particular request, and then assure that each member of the staff has enough resources to maintain their own schedule. Sounds all rather straightforward on paper, eh? *Laughs in agony*

Order #487

As with any cooking sim that allows you to manipulate the surroundings and assign commands to general members of staff, Kitchen Crisis does, thankfully, grant you passage to an extensive range of upgrades and all-round improvements, all of which provide you with additional ways to churn butter a little quicker, and prevent colleagues from meeting a rather grizzly demise at the hand of an extraterrestrial being. It’s your role, in short, to assure that commands are executed right on schedule, and to maintain a healthy relationship between the chefs, and of course, the clients; failure to keep tabs on either will, annoyingly, result in the closure of your establishment, as well as the demise of your loyal kin.

Kitchen Crisis isn’t a complex game, though it does require several attempts in order to crack a lot of its issues. Like a lot of games of its kind, the key to succeeding is to learn from your previous mistakes, and adopt new strategies that are more likely to result in a higher score. For me, it didn’t take too long to make heads or tails of a lot of its components, though it did, in all honesty, require three or four mindless romps through the motions to comprehend what was needed to progress. But then, perhaps that was just me; refer back to the comment about burning a pizza box in an air fryer. Needless to say that, whilst I wasn’t able to finesse the formula right off the bat, that isn’t to say that another, slightly more experienced connoisseur wouldn’t be able to make short work of it.

Just Burn It

At the time of writing, Kitchen Crisis has a hearty selection of UI-generated characters, ingredients, and dishes to choose from—assets that, while not entirely original, can all equally become valuable nodes in each new shift that you take on. What’s more, it also makes a genuine effort to transform each sprite into a unique line worker, too, which makes the selection process before each trial all the more thought-provoking and oddly strenuous. To this end, the game does require some basic understanding of how a kitchen operates; case in point, if you happen to position a prep counter too far from an oven, then you’ll ultimately wind up with lukewarm and tasteless meals—a result that you’re essentially aiming to avoid.

On one hand, I would’ve liked to have had the opportunity to get down and dirty with the kitchen staff and cook a few things on my own accord, but on the other, I was weirdly content with the role of being little more than the puppeteer in an anarchic environment. It made a lot of the process slightly less demanding, too, knowing that the cooking wasn’t a major issue that I needed to concern myself with, let alone address in order to make headway on a lot of the objectives.

Aside from there being a relatively small learning curve to navigate during the preliminary phases of the course, there isn’t a huge amount to figure out. Fortunately, the UI is clean, as are the mechanics and settings—again, nothing particularly special about either of the two, but the fact that they both perform to a certain level of quality does, unsurprisingly, make all the difference between a mediocre product and a genuinely good one. And if I had to call Kitchen Crisis anything — it wouldn’t be mediocre.

Verdict

Kitchen Crisis doesn’t quite give you enough creative control to create palatable dishes and tamper with other experimental techniques, which will clearly be an issue for those in dire need of some form of vessel to flex their culinary skills. With that said, it does provide something of a back door into the managerial side of things, which is a boon in itself, in all fairness; it doesn’t settle for a mere emulation of another game (Overcooked! springs to mind, for sure), but it does opt to take another perspective for a spin. It isn’t quite on the same level as, say, Cooking Simulator — but then, it doesn’t need to be, either.

If you had high hopes of dropping into the thick of a cooking-centric couch co-op simulation that draws blood from all the same pores as Chef Life or, I don’t know, Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale, then you’ll probably be a little disappointed with a lot of the ingredients that Kitchen Crisis brings to the table. However, if you don’t mind losing out on a lot of the finer details that flesh out some of the cult classics, then you’ll no doubt get a kick out of it.

To cut to the chase — yes, you should give Kitchen Crisis a whirl, doubly so if you enjoy the thought of lumbering commands on your peer’s shoulders and taking a bit of a backseat for the bulk of the ride. Don’t get me wrong, there are a few things that you’ll need to do to make an otherwise directionless restaurant a roaring success, but honestly, I wouldn’t worry about too much of it; it seems that the staff will essentially bend over backwards to assure that you don’t take the bullet. To that I say — give those guys a raise.