Eikas

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

One of the best experiences in IF is encountering a work that is NOT MY THING, then watching it, improbably, BECOME MY THING. My wife is the cook in our home, barring the stereotypical barbecuing, smoking and brewing. Yes, I am a walking cliche. I have my own hobbies (you can probably name one!), but that is hers and she is GOOD at it. While I can appreciate the mix of technique and knowledge that drives the fascination, there is just no motivation for me to dig in when I get all the benefit with little of the work. (Barring the dishes, of course. So many dishes.) A game centered on cooking is just aimed away from me.

This is a game where you (the protagonist) take on a probationary job, where your task is to thrill a community with your chef skills, and integrate into their daily life. I think making it BOTH of those things is a stroke of genius. It ably underlines how food is culturally so much more than raw nutrition AND introduces gameplay elements beyond ‘plan menu-assemble ingredients-check results.’ If it were only that, the game would quickly become mechanical. Instead, there is mild tension between balancing daily priorities of securing ingredients you don’t have QUITE the resources to afford and socializing and making an impact on the community, most notably through three important NPCs. The game effectively cues this with ‘approval’ scores that start at 0 and CLEARLY MUST GO UP.

The key thing this work excels at is matching gameplay urgency to its social vibe. It is not unnecessarily hard - if it were, player tension would undermine the amiable nature of making good friends and creating food art for art’s sake. If it were a nail biting pressure cooker of inadequate resources and hard alternatives, the vibe would be way more transactional and goal-based. Which as everyone knows is the BEST vibe to bring to new relationships. No, instead the difficulty is just present enough to keep you on task, but lax enough to let you marinate in the chummy world and relationship building, letting them unfold more… I’m so sorry… organically.

It helps that the writing is pitch perfect across the game’s concerns. Very little text is repeated through the game, leaving the player constantly engaged in a dynamic environment. The food preparation is a perfect mix of confident details and effective summarization - not drowning in too much detail. The food descriptions are concise, evocative and specialized. Its NPCs have their own voice and concerns, and dialogue is a pleasure to read. It all builds to an immersive warm bath of a game, carrying you from one well paced mini-climax to the next. Before I knew it I was Engaged despite myself. Yes, every now and then things got a bit mechanical. Yes, every now and then the tension lagged enough that I questioned whether failure was even going to be possible. These concerns were present enough to keep the work from becoming Transcendent, but did not chip away at my Engagement.

To call it a low stakes game is unfair. Its stakes are uncommon, and welcome for their novelty. It’s seeming low difficulty is so well aligned to its aims, that also does not feel like the criticism it could be. This is a very pleasant work of confident, effective prose that gave me every reason to reject it, yet won me over anyway. Thank you, chef!

Played: 9/17/24
Playtime: 2hr, 25/30 days, 15/20 stars
Artistic/Technical ratings: Engaged/Seamless
Would Play Again?: No, experience seems complete

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless