All weekend, posters and ads for Battle Chef Brigade kept popping up throughout the convention center, so naturally checking out this particular title was an inevitability. There were several stations set up to demo this in the Nindies room, including a Switch version.
The game is an intriguing blend of combat and match-3 puzzles, which—while not a brand new mechanic by any means—adds a fun spin with a cooking element tied into the match-3 games. The title of the game really does tell you what you’re getting into: cooking competitions that require you to hunt and gather for your ingredients, and then create your meal under a time constraint. It’s not quite Iron Chef or Chopped, but you can pretend?
The combat itself is also very fluid, lending itself well to the anime art style. The demo provided some information on how to execute some of the basics, but the real meat of the demo (pun intended) is in building combos in combat to do heavy damage. And then, of course, collecting the leftovers (look, you’re scavenging carcasses, it’s just presented in a more pleasant way than that) to make your meals.
The cooking competitions apparently get increasingly more difficult as you progress through the game, and it requires some fast thinking to ensure that you can cook something with a high meal rating.
If you’re drawn to the art style and enjoy a game with a variety of approaches to the play experience, Battle Chef Brigade seems like something you’d enjoy. It’s releasing for the Switch sometime during the winter, though a specific date wasn’t offered up. Keep this on your radar, aspiring chefs!
