Aug 1, 2024Indie Highlight
For those who enjoy games like Overcooked and PlateUp!, Hellspresso should be next on your radar! Developed by Eliary Games, this fast-paced cooking game will have you managing your restaurant while also planning and developing it. You play as a ghost chef who’s just trying to make a living in the afterlife. Each day you’ll craft your own menu and race against the clock to serve an ever growing customer base full of hungry guests. Start with a small, cozy restaurant and build it into something great as you increase your reputation to become the best chef in hell!
Run around taking orders, chopping up ingredients, cooking tasty meals, and serving dishes to customers before their patience runs out. There’s a lot to do to make sure things go smoothly, but you’ll have to balance duties with the personalities of your customers. Some are super impatient and unwilling to tip, while others will be the opposite. Serving them quickly is key to succeeding. Sometimes you even need to switch to your secret kitchen in Hellspresso to fulfill orders containing venomous mushrooms and magic plants. Or transform steak into rotten meat, sprinkle glowing eyes on donuts, or brew magic potions. And when you’re ready to make some upgrades, steal the souls of unsuspecting customers as they nap. Then, improve your skills and your restaurant!
Hellspresso is set to release on Steam in November of this year. Add it to your Wishlist to be notified of its release, and check out the demo in the meantime!
I’d also suggest Bone’s Cafe if you enjoy a darker, but still cozy game.
Jan 25, 2024Snack Size News
Embark on a fascinating journey to become a renown hotelier in Hotel Simulator 2024 by developer V4 Studio! This game is an immersive hotel simulation where you build and manage your own hotel empire. Start small with the cozy and modest bed-and-breakfast, then move up to five-star luxury hotels as you gain experience and money.
Hotel Simulator 2024 gives you almost complete control over your hotel empire. Construct and design every aspect of your hotel by choosing from different options. Select room types, restaurants, leisure facilities, and of course the decorating for every room. You want to craft the perfect environments for your guests to feel comfortable and appeal to them. Create modest, comfortable, and budget-friendly places to stay for travelers with a budget. Or, build fabulous and opulent places to attract high-money VIPs.
Building and decorating is simply step one of building your empire, though. Hotel Simulator 2024 lets you hire the necessary staff, too. Employ front desk services, maids, and more to ensure your hotel runs smoothly. Also keep an eye on finances, pricing, guest satisfaction, and more as you manage your hotels to become the best hotelier around!
You can find this interesting hotel sim on Steam now!
Tavern Master is an immersive sim where you build and manage your very own tavern.
Oct 19, 2023Indie Highlight
Here’s a game that aims less for the spooky side of things, and more towards just being a cute little witch game! In fact, if you remember the Diner Dash franchise, which I played obsessively as a teen, Tiny Witch feels remarkably similar. Except, instead of food, you’re serving up magical minions!
In Tiny Witch, you play as an adorably tiny witch. You’ve been left in charge of a magic wizard shop in a town full of dungeon masters. Your job is to serve customers what they ask for in a timely manner. Mix resources in the pounder and boil them in the cauldron. Then, create minions by mixing the magical resources on your alchemy table. Deliver the requested minions to each customer or face their temper!
As you play Tiny Witch, you’ll gain the chance to purchase new ingredients, as well as upgrades for your shop. Upgrade your pounder and cauldron for better efficiency. There’s even a wrapping stage where you can buy decorations, pets, and new work tables to spice up your shop!
You can find Tiny Witch on Steam now!
Rolling Hills is another fun time management game!
Oct 4, 2023Indie Highlight
It’s October, which means it’s time to get into the spirit of Halloween! Or at least get into the spirit of fall, if you’re not big on Halloween. Either way, Book of Hours is the perfect place to start. It’s cozy and charming, with a dose of mystery. There’s no combat, and it’s not scary so those of us who are scaredy cats can enjoy it too!
In Book of Hours, you play as a Librarian who has chosen a solitary life full of books and research. Your library, the famous Hush House, was once a bastion of knowledge. For fifteen centuries it stood as a place for patrons to gather and learn. However, a fire wiped out the book collection and the former Librarian simply disappeared. Now, you spend your days peacefully organizing books and helping visitors seeking information.
You’re also on the lookout for answers. Researching the occult stones around you, you’re determined to uncover the mysteries of history and that fire. Book of Hours offers an elegant, but melancholic experience as you spend time crafting inks and other tools to use in your day-to-day. You’ll even get to decorate your new home, study the nine Wisdoms, more!
Book of Hours is available now on Steam and Gog!
Here’s more Halloween games to try out: 5 Games to Get into the Halloween Spirit!
Dec 7, 2022News
In Yum Yum Cookstar, you’ll join chef Yum Yum in the kitchen to learn and create a variety of wonderful dishes. Take time to learn different cooking techniques from something as simple as cracking an egg, to knife skills, and even frying or grilling. There’s not a shortage of cooking techniques.
Once you’ve learned the appropriate cooking skills, you can make a fairly large assortment of recipes. There’s fun rainbow-color desserts like Rainbow Waffles and Unicorn Cupcake Cones. There’s also some savory dishes to prepare, like Falafel Pita, Sushi Burrito, and Japanese Summer Noodle Salad. Then, you present your creations to the judges to receive a score. It is a competition, after all!
The overall gameplay for Yum Yum Cookstar is fairly easy. You get a few options on what controls to use on the Nintendo Switch, which I found useful. I used the touch screen and Joy-Con controls. So, mixing and the swiping mini games were done via touch screen, while others like rinsing used the thumbstick, and baking used the Joy-Con buttons. While my rhythmic abilities are lacking, the touch screen made it easier for me than trying to use the buttons for everything.
You’ll need to learn some cooking techniques before you can work on recipes. Then, as you complete sets of recipes, you’ll unlock more cooking techniques, which unlocks more recipes to cook. You can learn each technique in a tutorial level with an unhurried atmosphere and no pressure. You can also revisit the technique’s tutorial to replay it at any time if you need a refresher.
After you’ve finished learning the techniques, you’re ready to cook the real recipes! Both The techniques and recipes involve playing a mini game. Many of the cooking techniques are rhythm-based mini games, which is fun. There’s a playful and unique soundtrack for the game that’s both relaxing and upbeat. I unfortunately am not rhythmic, so I never scored perfectly!
I would have liked to see more variety in mini games, though. It gets fairly repetitive the longer you play, because the techniques are always done one specific way. For example, stirring is always swiping left and right, swiping up and down, and making circles on the screen. There’s no change in that, or the order it happens during the mini game.
The personalities of the judges are almost as wide an array as the different types of recipes. Max Picante is the fun, light-hearted judge who’s easy to please. Basil Wellington is the snobby restaurant critic who demands absolute perfection and will test your skills. Then, there’s ambrosia, the pop star who is the middle ground between the other two judges and gives a more fair assessment.
What’s fun is that National Lampoon is responsible for the lines the judges say throughout the game. And sometimes, they throw out some funny responses. The disappointment I’ve gotten when I’ve failed tasks has been entertaining.
Yum Yum Cookstar is bright and colorful, and a perfectly casual game with the choice to have a no-stress play through. Or if you like a challenge, there’s different difficulty levels to try. It did fall a little flat for me, though.
The cooking techniques were repetitive, though that makes it easy to practice the activities to get perfect scores! Sometimes the number of mini games per recipe made it feel like an eternity making that recipe. My biggest complaint, though, is the long loading screens that occur between each segment of cooking and each segment of cut scenes. That really made the game feel like it dragged on. There’s some really fun art to look at on the loading screens, though!
However, the variety of recipes Yum Yum Cookstar has is wholly welcome and enjoyable. The vastly different personalities of the judges made their scenes entertaining, and it gives the game a competition feel. Overall, it’s a pretty good game to just pick up and play when you have a moment to fill, or are bored but aren’t looking for something more involved.
Epic Chef is another cute cooking game to checkout!
Aug 27, 2019News
We love cute, affordable Nintendo Switch games, and are happy to bring another rapidly-approaching one to your attention. The first Gnomes Garden released onto Nintendo Switch at the end of 2018. We are now very close to the Switch release of another Gnomes Garden game, called Lost King!
The Gnomes Garden games are listed as “strategy” games. You must plan out your moves carefully to be able to complete each level before the time runs out! But because time is such a big factor, we also feel that these games qualify for the time-management genre. Like its predecessor, Gnomes Garden: Lost King is an affordable, family-friendly game that operates on a basic story. You are the queen, and your husband went out to hunt, and he doesn’t come back! You must go find him. And the path is full of obstacles!
Gameplay in the Gnomes Garden game is quite simple, but becomes difficult more quickly than expected. In some levels you will need workers to clear some obstacles. So if the first thing you did was not to add another worker to the hut, you won’t have enough help to clear obstacles to other important points on the map. If that happens, you’ll fail to get through on time and have to restart the level. Or maybe on another level you’ll need a magician. Or perhaps you’ll need to build bridges, which makes resource gathering as important as bringing in more workers. Each level has different challenges, so you can’t use the same strategy every time.
Gnomes Garden games are simple but quite diverting. And if you’re goal-oriented, Lost King has lots of trophies to earn. Aim for the best possible performance and you’ll be able to admire the results of your accomplishments any time you like.
Gnomes Garden: Lost King will release on the Nintendo eshop on September 5th, for $9.99. If you’re eager to try your wits against the many tasks on the road to your goal in Gnomes Garden, you can buy the first game on the eshop for $4.99 right now! In the first game the king falls ill because his beloved garden has withered, so his daughter must save the gardens to save her father. (We must say…this Gnome King sounds like a high-maintenance kind of guy!)
For other affordable, family-friendly Nintendo Switch games, why not take a peek at our little list of cooking games, all available now on the Switch eshop!