‘Battle Chef Brigade’ Throws Culinary Competitions Into the Gaming Universe

A gaming company by the name of Trinket Studios is working on a new title wherein players will control chefs duking it out in a culinary competition like Chopped, set in a colorful fantasyland.

Battle Chef Brigade doesn’t simulate actual recipe execution, though — the chefs forage and hunt for their ingredients, and each dish involves a series of “flavor profile” puzzles built around matching different colored food items. So this is essentially a mashup of a puzzle game, a fighting game, and quest game. And just like on every culinary competition show that’s ever aired on TV, the chefs must present their finished dishes before a panel of judges, to determine their fates. Perhaps in a nod to Iron Chef, the game includes a “Kitchen Coliseum,” and a cape-wearing master of ceremonies who is reminiscent of the Chairman.

The game has been in the works for over three years now. It was originally Kickstarted, so preview builds of Battle Chef Brigade were made available to some of the backers. Here’s a clip of the Polygon team playing an earlier iteration of the game from 2016:

The Trinket Studios team experimented with more realistic cooking simulations, but ultimately the crew decided there were too many details for players to manage. "If you have to know how to really cook to play a game about cooking, it's too much,” says Trinket Studios president Tom Eastman. After taking an early test drive of the latest version of the game, Kotaku’s Cecilia D'Anastasio writes: “It feels like cooking, even if it’s abstracted beyond realism.”

An exact on-sale date has not been announced yet, but word on the street is that Battle Chef Brigade will be released around the holidays this year on PC, Switch, and PS4.

• Battle Chef Brigade’s Journey To Make A Game Out Of Cooking Reality Shows [Kotaku]
• Previously: Behold Battle Chef Brigade, an Epic Iron Chef-Channeling Fantasy Video Game [E]
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