Hello and welcome to another meeting of Steam Addicts Anonymous, the place where a couple of us shame-faced Z1G writers deal with the ever-increasing issue of our vast Steam game libraries by playing and discussing one game at a time in a judgement-free zone.

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 

My name’s Joseph and I’m a Steam addict.

I’m also ashamed to admit that I used to be addicted to Order Up!, the cooking sim available on Wii and 3DS. Recently, I relapsed with another cooking game, Cook, Serve, Delicious!.

Starting from a humble diner slopping out cheap food, you play as an aspiring chef determined to work his or her way up the culinary world. The gameplay is typical of cooking sims, and involves completing food orders that require various different steps and button combinations.

The challenge comes in trying to quickly fulfil multiple orders at once whilst making sure not to burn food. With chores including toilet cleaning and robberies to contend with, each day spent in the restaurant becomes a nail-biting balancing act.

As the game progresses, it’s grows in complexity. Extra-events and challenges keep things fresh, whilst variables like the weather can affect your success each day.

With equipment, new upgrades and new menu items to buy, Cook, Serve, Delicious! offers up tens of hours of simple and incredibly addictive gameplay for anybody looking for a polished restaurant sim to gorge on.

JBH

Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale

Hi everyone. My name is Trent and I’m a Steam Addict.

My life is pretty awesome. Between gaming, martial arts, and being a certified sex god (citation needed), there isn’t a lot to complain about. But even with things as great as they are, I still have a dream. A dream to open an item shop and be forced by the resident fairy/demon/loan shark to work off the considerable debt that my father accumulated before disappearing under mysterious circumstances. It is a simple dream, and it has only truly been fulfilled thanks to my horrible Steam addiction.

Remember that Steam Anime Sale I mentioned last time? Well, I may have also picked up Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale in that same flurry of JRPG spending that saw me playing as a human romancing pigeons at a school for birds. Recettear has lain sleeping in my Steam catalogue until recently, mainly because I kind of forgot that I bought it. However, having broken it out finally, I’ve found that it is kind of a cross between Harvest Moon, Dark Chronicle, and a light novel. Fortunately, it never even considers the possibility of taking itself seriously, which is why the shop’s name is both a combination of the two main character’s names and a pun on “racketeer” and why the young girl’s catchphrase is the hilariously unsubtle “Capitalism, ho!”. It is the kind of game that lends itself to simply turning off that part of your brain that tries to make sense of things as you begin the long and arduous process of trying to buy yourself out of slavery by swindling your friends and neighbours.

And this dream wouldn’t have come true without the glory of the surprise Steam Sale, so don’t you tell me that my addiction has no positive consequences!

Trent

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