Vive la Brigade!
Battle Chef Brigade is an action role-playing puzzle cooking game, developed by Trinket Studios and published by Adult Swim Games. It was released on Steam and Nintendo Switch on November 20, 2017, with a Playstation 4 release following on August 28, 2018.
The realm of Victusia was driven to the brink of extinction by the proliferation of monsters which threatened to starve the people by devouring the local wildlife while being poisonous to eat. That is, until a brave king and a cunning chef discovered the means by which monsters could be cooked safely. In the years that followed, the Battle Chef Brigade was founded; an order of brave warrior-chefs who protect the people from monsters while delivering delicious meals prepared from their flesh.
The game's story follows two Brigade hopefuls; Mina Han, a young girl from the Windy Village, and Thrash, a boisterous orc. Together, they enter a tournament in the hopes of being named new members of the Battle Chef Brigade, competing in cook-offs where they must slay monsters to collect ingredients and prepare dishes in the hopes of impressing the judges, ala Iron Chef.
Tropes
- Animesque: This game is American-developed and has an anime-style aesthetic.
- Badass Fingersnap: Mina snaps her fingers whenever she fires up her pan.
- Blow You Away: Mina is proficient in wind magic.
- Chef of Iron: Good at cooking? Check. Good at fighting? Check. Good at fighting the things you cook? Check.
- Cooking Duel: Battle Chefs compete with one another to create the best dishes in each match, with each duel tasking them with making meals incorporating a key ingredient while also flavoring them to suit the tastes of the judges.
- Cooking Mechanics: You can make plenty of fantastical meals based on which ingredients you pick up and cook using a Match-Three Game. Each recipe can be further combined with sides, and each character has their own unique cooking style and set of dishes. Mina bakes dished bakes on her family's restaurant's Chinese inspired cuisine, Thrash cooks Mexican-inspired orc cuisine, Ziggy makes elevated fast food, etc.
- Crapsaccharine World: Victusia is a realm where people eat delicious foods cooked from monsters. Unfortunately, said monsters are served only because they wiped other foodstuffs out. The Brigade is a bastion of hope for the people, but even they aren't without their faults...
- Easily Forgiven: The chefs that helped deal with the blighted monster outbreak after failing in the tournament are welcomed back in. Including Mina, who was expelled for using a knife against an enraged Shiv, and Shiv herself.
- Eldritch Location: The Darkrealms, a dark and twisted mirror dimension.
- Family Man: Thrash, who reveals he has a wife and children waiting for him at home whom he loves very much.
- Final-Exam Boss: The last challenge for Brigade hopefuls is a three-round gauntlet against veteran Brigadier chefs. In-game, this is shown as a Sequential Boss battle where Mina revisits the three different hunting ground to hunt their strongest monsters as the theme ingredients. The judges' tastes for these challenges encompass almost all flavor combinations, with Chairman Kamin requesting a dish that contains a balance of all three flavors at once.
- Food Porn: The dishes prepared in the game are sure to wet a few appetites.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: On the first day post-arrival at the tournament, you can talk to an NPC who is visiting just to watch Leonid and mentions how he is a favorite to win this year. Leonid will mention the same rumor if you talk to him the day after. If you choose to challenge Leonid as your second real opponent you'll find out his skills aren't being exaggerated. His dishes break the 200 point mark at an early stage where you are unlikely to have many upgrades or specialty pans. The reward is worth it though, as his trinket grants you 3 Rainbow Gems you can drop into any dish.
- Heavy Sleeper: Mina, whose love for taking "naps" often leads to her being late to her responsibilities the next day.
- Happily Married: Thrash loves his wife, Ardea, very much.
- I Am Not Weasel: Meta-example. The rather lithe and slender builds of Shiv and Thorn has lead many players to identify them as some form of Dark Elf, when both are in fact Cave Orcs and have the exact same skin tone as Ardea and Hazgill, who scan as orcish immediately thanks to being more heavyset.
- Jacob and Esau: Mina more closely resembles her slender, snarky mother, where her older, laid-back and more heavy-set sister Saskia is clearly their father's daughter.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Chapter 2 of the game ends with Mina saving Kirin from an enraged Shiv, and getting kicked out of the competition for using a blade to do so.
- Playing with Fire: Thrash can breathe fire, which is also how he fires up his pan.
- Pun: Ziggy refers to his method of cooking with necromancy as "Haunt Cuisine", a play on the phrase "Haute Cuisine".
- Red Baron: Each member of the Brigade, as well as the hopefuls, adopt epithets for themselves. Mina's title is "The Iron Stomach", while Thrash's is "The Benevolent Berserker".
- Replay Value: The player chooses which contestant to fight in nearly every round, and receives different rewards from each, which can effect how later rounds are handled. There are also Daily Challenges in which players compete for high-scores.
- Sidequest: On most days, you can partake in up to three sidequests; solving puzzles for Belchior, hunting monsters for Thorn, and serving up quick dishes for Pontinda.
- Small Town Boredom: What initially drives Mina to leave Windy Village, though she grows more appreciative later.
- Super Mode: Thrash can consume raw ingredients to activate a Berserk mode, which increases his movement speed and attack power.
- Systematic Villain Takedown: In the second half of the game, focused on Thrash, he needs to take down the Scowl Heart Bandits' chefs to get back the Yoku Hearts. The group has three chefs he has to face, getting one heart back per battle, and the other three serve as judges. The battles happen over the course of three days, with each chef being taken down on one day.
- Victory Pose: Mina and her peace signs whenever she wins.
