Wasteland Bites Review (PC)

I can’t tell if I’m serving skewered radioactive shish kebabs or ceramic bowls, but I can tell that the world around me isn’t quite as normal as it should be. With a truck that’s crammed to the brim with knickknacks and radioactive ingredients and a post-apocalyptic clientele that’s awfully ravenous for the taste of luminous waste, it feels as if I’ve mistakenly stumbled into a cesspit of my own making. I can’t tell who’s friendly and who’s dangerous, and I can’t for the life of me tell which dish is likely to instill nausea and which is likely to bring the world even closer to the brink of starvation. But what I can tell is that food is the one thing that can keep the wasteland in orbit and that waistband giddy. I just haven’t the slightest clue as to why it fell to me to feed the hungry. Call it bad luck, I guess.

Wasteland Bites feels like a fever dream that I simply cannot wake up from. On the one hand, I want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes, if only to scratch that curios itch. But on the other hand, I crave the thought of waking up to a calmer reality—a world where folks don’t make ludicrous demands and where snacks aren’t associated with radioactive waste. But it feels as if I’m stuck somewhere in the middle, between a rock and a hard place, with a truck that I actively despise, and a seemingly endless queue of oddball patrons who I would soon rather kick in the forehead than serve. I hate this place—the eerie silence, the disgruntled guests, and the contorted facial expressions—yet I also can’t help but love the pressure. I want it to be over, and yet there’s a small part of me that can’t resist the temptation to shovel more toxic sludge into the bellies of the oh-so-weird and wonderful.

For the record, this isn’t an ordinary culinary sport; it’s an eccentric post-apocalyptic horror that pretends to be a remote cooking sim, but hides another layer of mystery beneath its toxicity and its general kookiness. Don’t get me wrong, the gameplay is still relatively familiar, in that it primarily consists of taking orders, mixing ingredients, and keeping tabs on guests’ weird tastes in cuisine. But, herein lies the secret sauce. See, where most cooking sims invite you to bake, grill, or deep fry various dishes, Wasteland Bites requires you to dig a little deeper into your wild side. And by wild I mean, tapping into your love of radioactive waste and dishes that make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

It goes like this: customers—wasteland mutants, for the most part—approach your truck, make unusual requests, and wait impatiently for you to rustle up their dish. This is all textbook cookery, of course. The catch, however, is that the more you mess up your orders, the higher your stress level travels. The goal, in short, is to ensure that your stress remains intact whilst juggling various orders. There are upgrades to install in your truck, fresh locations to explore, and a lot of unique customers to serve. Easy enough to wrap your head around, true, yet surprisingly tough to master, believe it or not.

If it was about baking a few cakes, then it wouldn’t be a major issue. But, the fact is, Wasteland Bites is an advocate for unorthodoxy; it wants you to be unable to translate certain ingredients. And that’s the thing with the customers here. Unlike a textbook cookery sim, the people here crave weird things, some of which come cooked, raw, or simply smothered in toxic gloop. The annoying part here is that, nobody likes to make your life any easier by asking for ordinary items. In other words, everything in the wasteland is a problem, and your rising stress level is just one of the few things that can cause you to lose your mind and sink into blackness. But that’s a whole other story.

Learning curve aside, there’s a lot to sink your teeth into here. Alongside a generous selection of levels and themed post-apocalyptic scenarios to explore, you also have a ton of truck upgrades to dip into, as well as a double-sided gameplay system that lets you explore both cooking and various aspects of a survival game—limited resources, for example. It’s still relatively small in comparison to your typical cooking sim, but where it lacks in content, it clearly makes up for in eccentric storytelling and bizarre concepts. Maybe that’s worth the price alone, maybe it isn’t. Either way, I can safely say that you won’t find another game that looks like this. Silver linings, you know how it is.

Verdict

Wasteland Bites really does take the biscuit with its absurdly high-octane culinary practices and wildly unorthodox recipes, junkyard mutants and post-apocalyptic culture. It isn’t an ode to Betty Crocker; it’s Mad Max meets Fallout meets Happy’s Humble Burger Farm, if anything. And you know what? I couldn’t think of a more appealing concoction of wasteland weirdness to compliment an indie cooking sim. Sure, it might be a little difficult to gaze at, but it clearly makes for a unique experience that will, in all fairness, leave a lasting taste on the tip of your tongue. It’ll leave you with nightmares, too — so that’s another thing to take into account before we start docking points.

It’s honestly quite difficult to saddle Wasteland Bites with another cooking game, because at the end of the day, I’ve yet to see a game that nibbles on all of the same ingredients. Even still, I can’t help but push it into your face. Yes, it’s a little out there as far as indie culinary horrors go, but that’s sort of why I feel so drawn to it. In no way is it a brilliant game, but it is one that you’ll likely remember for months to come. And you can take that with a huge pinch of salt, friends.