A story-driven adventure game with just a little extra life sim flavoring.
Epic Chef is a simulation adventure game developed by Infinigon Games and published by Team17 released on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in late 2021.
Zest is a budding young chef who has just arrived on a new island full of constantly feuding chefs. He is soon tasked with the goal of uniting the people on the island with his own culinary skills.
Zest must traverse the island to get the resources needed to grow the food he needs on a farm and must then use the food items to craft new dishes. The dishes are given to other chefs who must then try the dishes in food fights. Zest's primary way of combat on the island is through food fights.
This game provides examples of:
- Accidental Murder: The reason Zest fled his home country of Luceria. He was a courtier who accidently killed the Queen by tripping and pushing her into a pit of ravenous monsters. He fled to Concordia to escape execution.
- All Just a Dream: If Zest loses the boss fight to Torapio then the defeat scene ends with him waking up in his bed just before the day of the fight.
- Armor-Piercing Response: Zest has a habit of giving these to people, prompting them to question their ideas and usually change. It's also given him a reputation for being preachy.
- BlackMail: How Zest avoids being extradited to Luceria. He had a book with dirt on "every single powerful person in the civilized world", including the royal family of Luceria. Valzoy borrowed the book, and then made it clear that pardoning Zest was the price and leaving him alone was the price of silence.
- Cat Folk: Nyarians are a species of this, and they're almost as common as humans in Ambrosia.
- Cordon Bleugh Chef: You won't win a food fight if the mix of ingredients you crafted into a new food is not good.
- Cool Old Guy: The two doctors. They both help Zest identify and hatch Birch's egg free of charge. Zest notes in his journal that they're good people, and one of the activities in Ambrosia after that is to have a friendly chat with them.
- Corrupt Politician: Apart from the city guards, the aristocracy in Concordia tend to be very corrupt as well. Later becomes a plot point. The reason Zest came to Concordia specifically is because he's magically bound to a book of blackmail. While this would put a target on his head anywhere else, the Concordian aristocracy wouldn't give a damn about their dirt becoming public.
- The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Malvaviscus, the head of the Critic's Union and main villain of the story, has no sense of taste. It's revealed when he's able to eat a meal that Mitrielle prepared which should have been unbearably spicy.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Played for laughs with Valzoy, and then played seriously. He reveals that the reason he dislikes critics, and came to Ambrosia to undermine the Critics Union, is that Malvaviscus gave one of his favorite restaurants bad advice, causing it to go out of business. At the end of the game, he reveals that the Homogony murdered his family during the last war and he came to hunt down Homogony spies.
- Defeat Means Friendship: There are a few examples, but the biggest is Mitrielle. She starts out as a rival to Zest, scheming against him, but later on they end up becoming friends.
- A Degree in Useless: Discussed later in the game. Zest reveals that, before becoming a fugitive, Zest was a Pantologist in Luceria. While this degree is considered impractical, it secured Zest a place in the royal court as a courtier.
- Dirty Cop: The guards in Ambrosia tend to be corrupt. Several solicit bribes from Zest, one is implied to have stolen valuable items from passing ships, and another accepts a bride to help a smuggler.
- The Empire: The Homogony fills this role, being an elf-supremacist state that tried to conquer the world and is still sending out spies to destabilize its rivals. Ironically, an old Empire that used to rule and was destroyed during the Nearpocalypse does not fit this trope, being portrayed as a stabilizing force more than anything else.
- Fake Defector: Mitrielle does this at the end. She pretends to side with Malvaviscus in order to duel Zest for the sole title of Epic Chef. Her plan was to throw the duel by making her dish inhumanly spicy.
- Foodfight!: Played in a different way. The game's combat system consists of challenging fellow chefs to a "food fight" where Zest and the other chefs have to try each other's food.
- Great Offscreen War: Two of these. The first was the Nearpocalypse, when portals all over the world opened and spewed forth monsters that the world had to fight against - one destroying the Empire. The second was the Desperate Stand, when the Homogony tried to conquer Ambrosia as well as a few other countries.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: Anzashi, the cultural leader of the Wiao community in Ambrosia, expresses utter disdain for Nyarians of mixed ancestry, as shown by her first interaction with Frishka.
- Haunted House: Villa Calamitozza is rumored to be haunted, and indeed looks decrepit and creepy at first appearance. The rumor is true.
- Hired Guns: Adventurers are part of Concordia's society, though they are barely tolerated. While they do defeat evil villains and cults, they're also known as thieves. Being called an adventurer is taken as an insult, and Zest states hiring the Orc Mafia is more sensible than hiring a band of adventurers.
- I Ate WHAT?!: While meeting with Zest at his villa, Mitrielle mentions that the "tea" was bitter. Zest responds that he never served her tea, and she must have drunken something unknown that was left in the villa by the previous owner. Que frantic vomiting in the villa's courtyard.
- Jesus Was Way Cool: Appears in the game as a carpenter and furniture salesman, and is consistently honest in his dealings with Zest.
- Lethal Chef: You can very well make new recipes that can hurt another chef if it means taking advantage of the situation to win.
- Magic Misfire: It happens a few times, especially when the Infinigon is involved. This costs the Festumancers their duel with Zest. They tried using magic to charm the King into granting them the victory, despite Zest and Mitrielle's dish being far superior. Their magic was sabotaged, briefly turning the King into an octopus.
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: When Zest's past is revealed, Frishka admits that she thought Zest was just joking when he had earlier said he killed a queen. Zest incredously asks why she thought he would ever joke about murdering a queen.
- Planet of Hats: The city of Ambrosia is obsessed with cooking, to the point where chefs and food critics both have their own government agencies capable of issuing licenses and fines.
- The Rival: Mitrielle becomes this to Zest after he beats her in a culinary duel.
- Serious Business: A big theme in the plot is the balance maintaining a passion for an art - in this case, cooking - without taking oneself too seriously.
- Ship Tease: Frishka develops a major crush on Zest after he stands up for her to a racist, all but stating her feelings for him and getting jealous when Mitrielle smiles at him. While they don't officially become a couple, Zest seems aware of and receptive to Frishka's feelings, with him dancing with her in the celebration at the end of the game.
- Took a Level in Badass: Zest. He begins the story as a fugitive and a stowaway, thrown arriving in Ambrosia with little to his name. Over the course of the game, he defeats all the great chefs in the game, becomes the co-owner of the best restaurant in Ambrosia, and becomes co-holder of the title of Epic Chef.
- World of Buxom: Mostly every woman you meet have some pretty big chests (A few even have bigger chests).
