Let’s talk reviews some more. In the last post, I touched upon how I have different standards when I review indie games, especially those that are made by devs with less than twenty-five people. I know I put a lower number on it yesterday, but I do think anything up to twenty-five is very small. Even more so when it’s less that five. The game I was discussing at the end of the post was Galaxy Burgers (Galaxy Workshop) which is made by two people. Two people! So of course I’m going to be way more generous with this game than with, say, Red Dead 2 (Rockstar Games)–or even Lies of P (Round8 Studio/NEOWIZ). That’s not to say that I won’t point out my issues with it, but it is to say that I will keep in mind that there are only two people making the game.
Just like the Cook, Serve, Delicious! series is only one guy–David Galindo (chubigans). This is really impressive given the scope of the games–especially for the first one. The food he designed looked absolutely mouth-watering, and I wanted to eat it as I was making the recipes. Each recipe included ingredients in which you had to tap a letter for each ingredient as quickly as you could. It’s hard as nails as evidenced in the trailer before. I only heard about it beacuse a content creator I was watching at the time, Northernlion, gave it a shot and quickly fell in love with it. So did Ryan Davis of Giant Bomb. In fact, the latter touted it so much, chubigans named a burger after him in the game–and Ryan Davis died roughly eight months after that.
The first Cook, Serve, Delicious! became a cult hit, and chubigans has always given credit to Ryan Davis. Chubigans went on to make two sequels and is now working on Cook, Serve, Forever! which is a more casual version of the formula. It’s still in Early Access, and while it’s not my thing, I’m still glad it exists. (I bought it and tried it out. I will keep trying it out. And I’m not mad at it.)
I love that I can play a game that is about cats and cafes/coffee shops/etc. There are a ton of games about cats and cafes these days, which pleases me. Even the ones that are the most basic don’t get me mad Like I said, I am not expecting AAA quality from a small indie game. I am incredibly generous/patient with small devs because I know that game development is hard, and I know that it’s even harder for small/indie devs.