Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: chubigans

The problem with series

Yesterday, I brought up the new game, Cook, Serve, Forever (David Galindo). It’s in Early Access, and I had been stoked to play it because I love the series. But, alas, it’s not to be. I’ll get more into it in a second, but I do want to give major props to a few aspects ofthe game. One, the music. The music has always been slamming in the games, and it continues to be so in this one. It’s fantastic, and it really bolsters my spirits as I play.

Also, the graphics just make me smile. Somewhat cartoon-y and lots of vibrant colors. The characters are varied in size, color, genders, and age. I just love the whole design vibe of the games. I like that you are a talking character in this game. You haven’t been in the past. You have loved cooking since you were a young girl and you grew up to be a cook in a food truck. You live with your (Asian!) girlfriend, and you have aspirations to be a great chef.

The conceit of the game is that there is a competition in which you want to get three stars like the famous chef, Rhubarb. She is the only one to have ever done it, and you want to be like her. I love that there’s a story and the characters are voiced. The two robots were voiced in the last game, but that’s it.

I love the voice actors in this game. They are great! I’m not crazy about how stereotypical the men are (they are the shopkeeps for Nori, the main character)–racial/nationality-wise. The main shopkeep is Baz from Australia, and it makes me wince that all his comments are very g’day mate-like.

But aside from that, I really enjoy the characters in general because they are fun and quirky. Ok, one other exception. The pastor in the church, but that’s because I have a bad history with churches. I don’t want to listen to a sermon while I’m playing a game.

But I do love the style of the game in general. Each game has iterated and done better than the one before. This is the best lookswise, and I’m impressed with how much effort Chubigans (the name he uses for Twitter) has putinto updating the look and feel of the game. This is eleven years after the first one was released, and I can really see the growth in the design of the games.


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Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!–just as addictive as ever

The food of my people returns!

One of my fondest gaming memories is 100%ing the original Cook, Serve, Delicious!* even though I don’t care about achievements at all.  I’ve explained before that my OCD traits mean that I went for perfect days no matter what in the first game and gold medals in the second. It’s carried over into the third game, Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!, which is what this post is about. It’s the third in the series, all done by one guy, David Galindo, also known by his Twitter name, chubigans. The game is in Early Access, but it’s already polished and very playable.

I’ve been playing it for a week, and I just can’t put it down. In the beginning, I played one or two days at a time because that was all I could handle. As I got back in the groove of the frantic keyboard pounding, I found myself chanting the letters over and over. For example, cannoli. I use it a lot because it’s a 4-point dish (out of 5), and I did it plenty of times in the last game. In the holding sta–

Ok. Let me back up. The last game introduced the idea of Holding Stations at the top of the screen where you can prep dishes ahead of time so they’re ready to go when customers arrive. You make them in bulk, so it saves on having to make them individually. Some of them require additional steps when the customer comes. Take, for example, hamburgers (another 4-point dish). You cook the meat (M) ahead of time in the Holding Station, then when the customer comes, you have to doctor the burger to their taste. It’s not uncommon to hear me chant, “M, M, B, C, S, R,” and sometimes I’ll add a, “SEND” at the end of it. I don’t think I could play this game in front of other people because it would be really disturbing to them. Not disturbing as in horrifying, but as in literally disturbing.

When I first tried the Holding Stations in the last game, I was against it because it was just one more thing to have to deal with. Now, however, I don’t know how I ever lived without them. It’s a godsend to be able to fill five or six orders at once rather than each individually, and then just have to fill it out once when they’re all gone.

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