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Review
Very emotional ending, but unclear if it's working as intended., July 10, 2025I won't tank an indie creator with a low-star review, since overall, Eikas is a fantastically cool concept with a lot of interesting ideas, wonderful characters, well-integrated worldbuilding, and obviously excellent construction. I just had a bad time, and I'm trying to figure out of this was the intended experience. Spoilers for my ending marked below.
(Spoiler - click to show)So, after the last Community Meal, I had 19/20 stars of community approval, and max friendship with Antonia, Llew, Orlando, and Merry-Andrew. I had whiffed 2 meals, then 3-starred the others, and 4-starred the last meal. I also helped a ton of villagers, and I fulfilled 3 community board meal requests. I also generally chose dialogue answers along the lines of "Cooking isn't my passion, but I love being a part of a community."
And then I failed my probation.
It's testament to the effectiveness of the writing that I sincerely felt like my future had been ripped away from me. What did I do wrong? Why am I not good enough? Did I offend someone? Can I apologize? I chose to spend time with Orlando after, and they had the same reaction I did in-universe, and their promise of support helped me believe that my chef was going to land on their feet. But I felt AWFUL. 95% approval rating wasn't enough to 'win'???
If this is a glitch, then it's a glitch, and I just had an unpleasant emergent gameplay moment. If this is intentional, I'm... struggling. Again, it's a sign of good writing that the story was able to make me feel sincerely devastated. But I'm not sure what meaning I'm meant to take. Sometimes life fucks you over, but you have to keep trying? Not every community has space for every person, so keep searching? Even if I'm an amazing cook, the Community Chef must inherently love cooking and tell everyone so? Community leaders are held to a standard of perfection that normal people don't meet?
I don't get it. It's not always the point of art to 'get it,' hence, this is still a 5-star review. But I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. It definitely took me a while to figure out how to build menus, or how to make the best use of basic recipes in the early game, and that repetitive menu items were hurting more than helping. I'm considering playing again to test if the player always gets fired, even with a 20/20 score, but my heart still hurts. Do I actually want to work that hard to win over a community that rejected me? And they aren't even a real community, they're a story. Pixels and text. But the game is so good as-is that I forgot that fact, and the ending provoked a sincere feeling of sorrow and exclusion.
If this game is meant to be a tragedy, then it's right on target. If it's not, then I think the standards of success are unclear and unforgiving. But so long as that was an intentional choice by the creator, that's still a powerful message. Life is unclear and unforgiving. So, we have to do our best to be kind to each other, because that's all we have the power to do.
Thank you for this game.
Comments on this review
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Hey! I normally don't respond to reviews here (I think it's important that people feel able to express their honest opinion), but since you had a direct question I hope it's appropriate for me to respond.
Firstly, thank you for your lovely words about the game, and I'm glad you (mostly) enjoyed it!
The game is working as intended - the 20 stars are essentially a bar that you're aiming to fill over the course of the game, and if you fill the bar (20/20) you get to stay in the job. What should maybe have been communicated better in the UI is that 20 stars isn't the max possible, just the minimum threshold to 'win' the game, so 19/20 doesn't translate to 95% completion in a mechanical sense - I can't remember the max number of stars it's possible to achieve behind the scenes but it's something like 30-40. If you got low scores on 2/6 of the meals that probably scuppered your chances a bit, unfortunately.
This sounds like a issue of design on my part, whether in communication or balance or both. I found this game REALLY hard to balance - some playtesters found it way too easy to win and some way too hard, so that made calibrating the numbers a bit tough! I'm sorry that your ending felt unsatisfactory - if you did decide to play again, I think with your knowledge of what worked in your first playthrough you'd smash a win.
Thank you for taking the time to play and leave a review, and for being gracious enough to leave a high rating despite the disappointment!
This is really useful to know, thank you!
I completely understand the difficulty of how to communicate standards for success, especially with the push and pull between narrative and gameplay. I think the game would suffer a lot if characters talked too much like they knew they were in a video game, just for the purposes of giving the players information. I don't even think a line like: "The Community Chef is a very important role, and we can only offer that position to a person that the community unanimously approves!" would solve this. People read fast, and there's no guarantee that the right information won't get lost in other details. Detail was another thing that I loved about the game, things like commenting on the weather and the townsfolk's interactions, and all the realistic stories of why people needed help or certain foods on the community board. It's very creative and compassionate.
I think if I run the math, my community meals earned 15 stars, so you have already built in other ways to win stars. It sounds like I got an extra star for all the friend I maxed? Or maybe making meals for the community board increased my stars? I'm definitely glad that you included mechanics to help players "catch up" if they had a few dings on their community meals.
I still think this game deserves a 5, even with the unclear success level. Even the experience of expecting success and receiving failure was powerfully resonant; I can picture other games handling the same event way less elegantly.
I did start a second playthrough, paying a lot more attention to things like menu creation and community board meals. At this point, most important gameplay feedback I would have is to more clearly communicate which cuisines are from the same region (I know Ramen and Fried Rice are probably from the same region, but where are Kedgeree and Çilbur from? Are Stuffed Peppers and Mashed Squash regionally aligned?). Other quality of life things might not be possible, like a way to sort recipes by quality or alphabetically, but thinking about it, that feature wouldn't have "saved" me. :D
And in a lot of ways, it's probably not right to tinker with this game after launch. I'll just look forward to the next one! Thanks so much for your response, and especially for the insight into how much care you placed into making this game the best it can be! Happy Friday!
