Monster Menu: The Scavenger's Cookbook is a Roguelike Strategy RPG developed and published by Nippon Ichi. Originally released in Japan as Shikabane-kurai no Bouken Meshi (Adventures of The Corpse Eater) on January 27, 2022, the game would eventually recieve an English release for Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4 and Playstation 5 in May the following year.
In the town of Piohne, adventurers are abundant - and you are one of them. A greenhorn fresh out of training, you decide to test your prowess by traversing a beginner's dungeon known as the Sealed Lands. Sadly, things didn't quite go as planned, causing you to get stranded far deeper than you planned to go. Having long since burned through your supplies, it seems like you're going to die a sad, lonely death far from home...until you find the rotting corpse of a strange, bug-like beast lying on a forgotten altar. Out of options, you tear off one of the beast's legs and begin eating it, only to pass out halfway through and wake up at an abandoned camp. Having miraculously staved off death, it's up to you to find a way out of the Sealed Lands - while hopefully cooking up some good grub along the way.
Fasten your pack and loosen your belt before tucking into these tropes:
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Every character in the main party is not only renameable (a rare case for Nippon Ichi, since they usually prefer to have named protagonists), but fully customizable as well.
- Excuse Plot: An unusual example - there's a copious amount of backstory, but you and your party have next to nothing to do with it beyond being in the same place where Desh, Mihil and the Gluttony God were sealed, and the main character inheriting the Gluttony God's curse by eating Mihl's flesh. As far as your party's concerned, they're just in over their heads in a dungeon and want to get out.
- Was Once a Man: That monster you ate the leg of in the beginning? That was actually Mihl, a legendary adventurer who sacrificed himself to help seal away Vells and was cursed by him for it.
