Let’s be honest, cooking games are a dime for a three-course meal, there are so many of them and while most just focus on cooking or at least pressing buttons in order to assemble a plate. There are however very few games that let you run a restaurant and none that go into as much depth as Recipe for Disaster. The question is, did the ingredients come together to make a worthy meal, or is the result something that should be sent back to the kitchen?

There are two modes to the game, a scenario mode, where you are given a starting point and then objectives to complete and the sandbox mode, which is perfect for those who just want to enjoy things, without worrying about any goals. Each mode has their pros and cons, but they are still both checking out, of course before you jump into either, the game offers a tutorial to show you the ropes and you will want to take it. The basic goal, regardless of the mode you are playing, is that you need to hire staff, have them cook the food people order, whilst creating a menu, cleaning the restaurant down and even ensuring you have food in the place to actually cook. The game doesn’t demand you master everything at once, but it doesn’t take long until you have to manage everything and when it does it can quickly become an overflowing mess.

Before you open your restaurant, there are plenty of choices to make, like how many tables you want to have, but also the theme of your place. If you are doing a scenario, there is little you can do theme wise, at least in the early stages, but you can still customise them to suit your own preference. While you can easily throw tv’s onto every wall in the place, you can wreck the ambiance of the place, and that can stop customers from coming in, and while fire extinguishers are required, people don’t like seeing them. Determining exactly the look of your place, is as important as the food you serve, because if you can’t get people in the door, it matters not about the cooking skills of your staff. Thankfully, decorating is simple, most items snap to walls or the floor, so you can’t just place a random chair it he middle of the room and if you do create one complete dining location, you can just copy it and replicate it in one go, saving you time. There are some weird things, like not being able to decorate an entire wall at once, but I suppose it feels more realistic and those things do take time.

Something that doesn’t take time is the managing of the staff, each member of the team has things they like doing and things they hate doing, for example someone might love working the fryer, but hate cleaning. Thankfully the game has a smart system in play, where you can assign staff to locations, so you can assign someone to be a waiter, by assigning them to the tables as their first task, the second could be to clean that area. What this means is that if there are no customers, or orders to take out to people, they will clean up, but if there are people to serve, that as task number one comes first. It is a smart system, it means that you can have one chef attached to three different counters in the kitchen and if your place is all about that fried chicken, you can just have them focus on that. The downside is that you have to have people assigned to everything, cleaning especially requires a separate focus, if you don’t set up a cleaning area for the toilets, they can get back quickly and that impacts your rating and stops customers from coming in.

All the above requires a fair bit of concentration and if the game was all about that, then it would be pretty chill, as long as you are on board with what is required. Where the real challenge comes in, is with the recipes, as you can customise the menu to suit what you want, so if the place you start only offers burgers at the beginning, you can elevate the menu later on. While your choice is an option, you will have to adjust the menu to suit the tastes of your clientele and that requires some sacrificing of something to work out, because they can be so pedantic on things, even when the menu offers the exact thing they are wanting already. Creating an item is not just a straightforward task, like writing things down on a chalkboard, you have to choose the ingredients you want to use, then how you want to cook it and it isn’t just something simple, you have to include the sides and how they are prepared, it is a deep system.

The problem is that investing time into that, takes the focus away from the rest of the restaurant and while the staff will do the tasks they are assigned, if something pops up and you are not paying attention, it can bite you in the butt. The way you build items is straightforward, at least if you follow the instructions or have a flow chart background, you simply choose your cooking method and what you want to cook and that’s it. The catch though is that once you start creating dishes that require multiple ingredients, which you have to have on hand and different cooking methods, things can quickly become super complex, which will trip up even the most veteran of players.

Each of the systems on their own, are fine, but like any culinary masterpiece, it is when you are plus it up that things become special and the game here is amazingly so, once you can master the various aspects, you really get going. The problem is that some of them are just to finicky at times, the ambiance seems easy, but if you place down a sculpture, it can easily drive away some customers and if you don’t correct that placement, it can become a real deterrent. Trying to balance everything else, alongside creating new items for the menu, its hard line to straddle, there were times when things would be moving along smoothly, but then out of nowhere something would go wrong and the balance would be broken and once broken, it is hard to re-establish it.

On the presentation side of things, the game has a custom look, that while weird at first, will grow on you and it won’t take long. The world around the restaurants isn’t deep, but as the focus is on the location, that is to be expected, however the world doesn’t just drop off the edge of the block, so it doesn’t feel like you are in a void. While the building can be basic and the early ones will be, once you start expanding into larger spaces, adding chairs, lights and such, or even if you are working on a bar, everything starts to feel alive. There are times that some of the employees just stand around, which is likely accurate, but they are not standing chatting, they just stop for a moment or two, like the game is trying to work out the animation needed next time, but apart from that, its good across the board.

If you have been playing sim games for years and want something challenging, then this is the game for you. Recipe for Disaster will hold your hand early on, but once that is removed and the training wheels come off, you have to balance so much and at all times, much like a real chef would and it’s a challenge. If you are a casual sim game player, the game might seem welcoming and charming at the start and it is, but you have to pay attention, because if you don’t it will break you. While everything here sounds like it would be a perfect meal, it won’t suit everyone’s tastes and that’s ok, but for those who enjoy a hearty gaming experience, this is one you will want to sink your teeth into.