Pom, the Adventurer turned Restauranter
Cuisineer is a hybrid dungeon crawler RPG and business management sim, akin to Recettear or Moonlighter. The game was developed by BattleBrew Productions, and published by XSEED Games. The game was fully released for PC on November 9, 2023. An official Twitter account for the game, run from Pom's perspective, can be accessed here
.Pom is a young adventurer who rushes to her hometown of Paell after receiving a letter from her parents, only to find that they've simply left her and her friend Biscotti in charge of maintaining their now-derelict family restaurant Potato Palace while they're away on a cruise, at least until debt collectors come to repossess the property. Not wanting the business to go under, the two girls decide to reopen the restaurant, with Pom cooking sensational meals out of the various food-based monsters she defeats during her dungeon delves.
This work uses the following tropes:
- All the Worlds Are a Stage: Challenging the League of Cuisineers takes the form of a cooking competition in an arena, with four rooms based on each exploration stage in order to obtain ingredients and a central room for cooking all of the meals that the judges request.
- Archnemesis Dad: After beating all three rounds of their competition and qualifying for the League of Cuisineers, it turns out the reigning champions want to have a battle against Pom before she can become an official member. They then turn out to be her own Mum and Dad, who had kept their status a secret from her.
- Aristocrats Are Evil: Kaviar, a representative of the League of Cuisineers, is a high-class lady that completely dismisses Pom's work at first because Pom serves to commoners instead of cooking Snooty Haute Cuisine for nobles with refined taste. Pom takes it in stride, but Biscotti is infuriated and convinces Pom to challenge her league directly. However, after Pom wins their competition, she admits that perhaps she judged Pom too quickly.
- Bizarro Elements: Ordinary elemental affinities are instead named after food terms, such as "Toasty" representing fire or "Bitter" replacing electricity.
- …But He Sounds Handsome: At the end of Pom's first day of running the restaurant, she finds a note left by someone congratulating her and her cute, hard-working waitress friend Biscotti for a job well done, signed by "someone that's not your best friend". Pom instantly sees through it but treasures the note regardless.
- Dine and Dash: Customers may attempt this, causing you to waste time and ingredients. You can stop them before it happens, thankfully, and they'll pay up.
- Dual Boss: The game's Final Boss is Pom's parents, with the first two phases fighting one at a time before the last phase has them fight Pom together.
- Edible Theme Naming: Many of the supporting characters are named after food or cooking implements, such as Pom, her best friend Biscotti, the weaponsmith Briquette, and the League of Cuisineers members Kaviar, Shirataki (gelatinous Japanese noodles), and Rawon (Indonesian beef soup).
- An Entrepreneur Is You: After Biscotti informs Pom that she's going to be safeguarding the Potato Palace, her family's now-abandoned restaurant, while her parents are way, she suggests they reopen and run it themselves in order to help fund Pom's adventuring and repay Pom's family debts.
- Food Porn: Every time Pom hears about a new recipe, it's accompanied by full-screen artwork of the food in question, complete with a quick blurb about the dish from the quest giver.
- Frying Pan of Doom: Pom's weaponry for her dungeon delves are all large versions of kitchen utensils, including spatulas, carving knives, meat tenderizers, oven mitts, and egg timers.
- Gentle Giant: Alder, the local carpenter, is so tall that his default talking portrait doesn't fit in the screen, but he bends down in order to talk to Pom and is always courteous with her and other people.
- Metaphorically True: The game begins with Pom receiving a letter from her parents that asks her to come home because they're about to leave the mortal world, worrying Pom due to implying that they're going to die. When Pom returns, she learns they've actually just sold all of their stuff to go on a cruise and see sights most people never would in their mortal lifetimes, and just want her to safeguard the family restaurant while they're away.
- Parental Neglect: While Pom's parents are not directly neglectful, sending postcards on occasion and wishing her well, they did sell absolutely everything in the restaurant and take out thousands of coins worth of debt in order to pay for their cruise, which Pom ends up having to repay. Even after beating them at the League of Cuisineers arena, they just tell Pom they love her and how proud they are of her, and that they'll all sit down to talk about everything "some time" before running away to catch a transport instead of answering any of Pom's questions.
- Take Your Time: Unlike most other management sims that involve paying off a debt, there's no strict deadline for your payments here. That said, advancing the story and thus unlocking new dungeons, equipment and recipes is locked behind the debt payments, so you're still encouraged to pay the debts as soon as possible.
- Title Drop: "Cuisineer" turns out to be an official title used by an organization of professional chefs that hunt their own ingredients, and Pom takes on a challenge to join their ranks at the end of the main story.
- To Be a Master: After paying off the final debt of Pom's parents, a representative of the League of Cuisineers arrives and mocks the restaurant, infuriating Biscotti into signing Pom up for a competition against the League's members (with a hefty entrance fee) to prove that Pom's the greatest of them all.
- Work Off the Debt: Story progression is locked by series of debts that are paid by running a restaurant, first to save the restaurant after Pom's parents use it as collateral for multiple loans to afford their luxury cruise and a second business, and then to pay the entrance fees of a challenge against the League of Cuisineers.
