大繁盛！饱腹市场：Gourmet Story ~ RIEview + Mini Guide

 

With the wide selection of fast-paced games in my collection, I wanted to expand my casual game collection. Gourmet Story is an idle casual game revolving the most important need of man – Food. But not just any kind of food, if you could understand Chinese, that is. The game is actually developed by Japanese company Flyhigh Works and ASOBOX, but has been translated to English for Nintendo Switch. 

I personally got the Chinese version on the App Store for free, so I’m not sure if this is the same for all regions (except Japan, of course). Because there is an English version, I will not be translating the stories as I initially planned to do. This post contains a review and a mini guide, similar to the previous post on Love ToDo. Read on to see how this game fares!

Game Plot 

You play as the protagonist, a Royal Food Advisor tasked to restore the once bustling World Tree Marche to its former glory – a once popular food truck hub boasting of many delicious cuisines. Armed with your expertise in neo recipes, you will work with 6 food truck chefs in the project to revive the Marche’s popularity. But beware! The Gourmand Corporation got wind of your arrival, and will do everything it takes to ensure its complete control of the cuisine scene. In the meantime there’s hungry customers waiting, so into the kitchen you go!

As an idle game, main story chapters will be unlocked every time the World Tree is levelled up. In addition to the main story, each of the food truck chefs also have their own stories and secrets that give perspective to the overall story. Check out the section on Game Mechanics to see how you can level up!

Verdict (5/5)

I love the story! The time it takes to unlock the next chapter depends on how active players are. More casual players will take longer to level up, and therefore longer to unlock the next chapter. I personally find the story is engaging enough that it motivates me to play more frequent in order to level up quicker to get to the next part of the story.

Character Diversity & Personality 

Aside from the female protagonist, there are 6 main characters that play a big part in the story. Though I am familiar with the names in Chinese, seeing that the English names are more accurate to its Japanese origin. While in the English edition the protagonist’s default name is Lunch (yes, it’s an interesting name), you can change the protagonist’s name. The 6 food truck chefs, according to their appearance in the game, are: Anise (Female), Fennel (Male), Marjoram (Female), Basil (Male), Mitsuba (Female), Tarragon (Male). 

Each character is unique in personality and definitely has interesting backstories. I would say that usually Fennel isn’t the type of guy I would be interested in, but with his backstory and how meeting the protagonist challenges his thinking, Fennel quickly became my favourite among the lot. The characters do fall for the protagonist along the way, but the chemistry between Marjoram and Basil is hilarious and totally couple material!

Verdict (4.5/5)

The character stories are plenty, and like the main story new chapters will unlock with every subsequent level up of the character. Some stories are comedic, others heartwarming, but the stories shed light on their personalities and how they become a food truck chef. The protagonist’s expertise in neo recipes remind me of Shoma from Food Wars, where his recipes can be… interesting, which is an understatement of the year really!

Game & CG Art 

The art is bright and fun, drawn with the usual anime elements that catches attention easily. The character designs reflect their personalities and where they come from, like Mitsuba in traditional Japanese clothing while Anise has on a western outfit. The developers utilised the traditional 2D art style on most interfaces, and only uses pixel art when depicting the miniature versions of the characters in the main page and when out gathering ingredients.

Verdict (4.5/5)

My absolute favourite pictures would definitely be the food pictures! Sure, some are questionable in terms of the pairing of ingredients, but others look appetising that I wish they exist in real life! I can't help laughing whenever a recipe is successfully created and seeing the character's reactions to eating it. Kudos to both the writers and the artists!

Game Mechanics 

The aim of the game is to sell food and attract customers to revive the Marche. There are 3 main features: Unlock new recipes, Serve customers, Gather ingredients. 

Unlocking new recipes require using character points (i.e. CP), which are points gained by gathering ingredients and selling food. To correctly create the dish, you need to match the ingredients to the description of the dish. Each ingredient has a description that will be mentioned in its corresponding dish. But if you need help, check out this blog for the Chinese version of the recipes or the wikia here for the English version. 

Serve customers by selecting the dish you want to sell. Each dish has different labels: New arrival 新美食 [XinMeiShi], Returning item 回归美食 [HuiGuiMeiShi], Common dish 招牌美食 [ZhaoPaiMeiShi]. The gauge on the top left is the fever gauge of the food truck you’re in. Once filled, fever will be activated where a surge of customers visit to buy food. You can also activate fever by paying golden eggs 金蛋 [JinDan], with the amount of golden eggs needed varying depending on the gauge level.

Note that you can only create new dishes and serve customers by having sufficient ingredients. To get ingredients, choose the location and travel to the location with the corresponding chef. Begin by choosing the dish that the field monsters like so they will assist in collecting ingredients for you. Each trip uses energy and G coins, and in each trip you will need to spend energy in 2 additional segments in order to proceed to the end. Make sure you have enough energy or you’ll miss out on the rewards can be won at the end of the trip. Energy can be replenished by using golden eggs. After swiping to collect the ingredients at the end of the trip, the chest will either give gold or CP. Depending on the level of your chef companion, you will also unlock chapters in their story. 

To assist in levelling up, you can purchase upgrades at the balloon tree. Each balloon correspond to a respective boost. Note that each upgrade uses G coins. G coins are obtained from selling food, so keep selling! Running low on energy, or find that the energy limit is too low? Feed the protagonist with food! After you feed her a certain amount of a dish, you will increase the energy limit by 1.

Verdict (4.5/5)

As a idle casual game, it’s not as tedious as those idle clicker games. Basically you just need to stock up dishes and ingredients and the chefs will sell them. Just come back into the game from time to time to make sure food can still be served. When the idleness bores you, the storyline comes in and spices things up. I recommend watching ads when going out to gather ingredients, as you will get double the ingredients at the end of the trip!

In-Game Events 

N/A 

I highly recommend this game! In whichever edition you obtain, be it the English version on Nintendo Switch or in other languages in the App Store/Play Store, you will not be let down by the quality packed into this game. The best part is that this game can be played offline, so you can keep playing even when you're outside with no Wi-Fi/mobile data. 

Will you try it out? Let me know what you think in the comments below!

Happy Gaming!

~ RieRie