Why Cooking Games Draw Food as Cartoons
It is not an art preference. At 800 by 600 with a dozen ingredients on the shelf, a photorealistic tomato and a photorealistic pepper are the same red blob.
game designrestaurantart
📝 12 articles
Cooking Game Writing
Articles about the games in this library — mechanics, control schemes, and the differences between titles that look alike from the thumbnail. Every piece is written for this site and references games you can open from it.
Cooking Games Without a Clock, and How to Spot Them
The relax tag lies — one game here carries it alongside a timer tag. The description language is a better filter, and an export button is the strongest signal of all.
bakingdessertsrelaxed
Cooking Games on Touch vs Mouse: What the Canvas Sizes Reveal
Sixty-three of the 294 games here ship a portrait canvas and eight require a keyboard. The frame dimensions predict device fit better than any store label.
controlsmobilerestaurant
Food Merge Games Aren't Cooking Games
In a merge or idle food game the dish is a token with a tier number. In a prep game it is a state machine. That difference decides whether you can lose.
tycoonrestaurantgame design
Build Order in Layered Dessert Games
Every oven in a baking game is a one-way door, and every sauce is terminal. The assembly rules these games never state, read off their own step lists.
bakingdessertsgame design
Restaurant Tycoon Upgrade Curves: Where the First Coins Should Go
Kitchen tycoons sell three different kinds of upgrade, and which one pays back first depends on whether the game earns while you are away.
tycooneconomystrategy
Knife Games and the Cost of One Misplaced Cut
Three cutting games, three completely different punishments for a bad stroke — graded, multiplicative and catastrophic. Each one demands a different hand speed.
prepfastfooddifficulty
Do Drink Games Actually Measure Your Ratios?
Mixing a drink sounds like a proportion problem, but almost every browser drink game scores something else entirely. Only one here measures a quantity.
drinksrestaurantcontrols
Burn Windows: The Timer Grill Games Don't Show You
No cooking game in this library documents when food goes from done to ruined. The bin gesture, the upgrade shop and the holding state tell you anyway.
restaurantfastfoodgame design
Recipe on Screen or in Your Head: Two Schools of Cooking Game
Whether the recipe stays visible while you cook decides if a game tests routing or recall — and the penalty design tells you which school you have landed in.
restaurantbakinggame design
Order Queue Depth: Why Three Tickets Can Beat You and Five Won't
Concurrent orders are a bad difficulty proxy. What actually loads you up is steps per ticket multiplied by whether the game lets you build two dishes at once.
restauranttime managementdifficulty
How Long Is the Patience Bar? Reading Service Timers Before You Commit
Customer patience is the one number that sets a restaurant game's difficulty, and no publisher documents it. Here is how to read it off the kitchen layout instead.
restauranttime managementgame design