Summary
While having to prepare three meals a day might be a chore in real life, cooking simulators let us live out our wildest culinary fantasies without the pressures of keeping ourselves alive. In video games, you can meticulously create dishes, manage kitchens, and even run a whole restaurant all without getting your hands dirty. (The only downside is that you can’t actually eat anything you make.)
Whatever kind of cooking you’re looking for, there’s something here for everyone. So sharpen your knives and get ready to jump into the world of cooking sims.
Platforms
PC
If you’re an ambitious chef with your sights set on creating detailed recipes and extensive menus, then this game will definitely scratch that itch. The game’s customization comes with hundreds of ingredients, which can be combined almost infinitely to create unique dishes.
The game also offers business management options, letting you customize your character via a skill tree, choose staff, decorate the restaurants, and set policies, though this isn’t as strong as the recipe creator element of the game. If you’re looking for even more involved management, we also recommend the Pizza Connection games.
Not all of us want to be big-time chefs, some of us want to be baristas.If your culinary focus is on cafés, then Espresso Tycoon provides not only a café management sim but also a way to create your drinks.
With a story mode that features different locations, the game gives you a chance to customize everything from coffee trucks to coffee trains. When you finish that, there’s also a sandbox mode for getting as creative as you may.
Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PC
Who said cooking had to be boring? This game combines cooking and fighting in one short, action-packed ride. There’s a story mode that involves literally hunting down your ingredients and then cooking them using puzzle-based mini-games to earn your place in a fantasy cooking brigade.
This isn’t the most cooking-heavy cooking sim, but it is one of the most unique ones out there. Plus, after beating the story mode, there are still daily challenges to play.
It’s happening
Release Date
Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox One & X/S & Cloud Gaming, GeForce Now, PC
What makes PlateUp! stand out is that it’s a roguelike, but for cooking. In each procedurally generated restaurant, your goal (well, you and up to three friends) is to create the most effective restaurant for serving customers.
This includes thinking about the placement of each item, and considering how each appliance can be used to help with automation. Then, once you’ve mastered that location, you can move on to the next with both what you’ve learned and the perks you’ve earned.
Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox One & X/S, PC
A cute and cozy bakery sim. You’re fixing up an abandoned, haunted bakery, crafting and selling treats to your customers. There are a few farming elements, and you’re able to grow ingredients as well as raise a handful of animals alongside redecorating.
If other cooking sims can get too intense during peak customer rush, or if you want a better balance between minimal management and cooking elements, then Lemon Cakeis a good game to unwind with.Also, the art style is simply adorable.
Nintendo Platforms, Andriod, iOS
Cooking Mama is one of the most prolific cooking games there is,with almost 20 games (including the spin-offs).As you might imagine, you prepare the food through various mini-games following the instructions given to you by iconic Cooking Mama.
Since there are so many games to choose from, you can either look up the latest one in the series (that would be Cooking Mama 6: Made To Order), or you can find which of Mama’s many niches suits your interests. She not only does cooking but also bakes, gardens, and babysits.
Nintendo Switch, Andriod, iOS, PC
Who doesn’t love pizza? Good Pizza, Great Pizza is a game about running your pizzeria and out-competing multiple pizza rivals all while trying to financially stay afloat. There are over 300 unique customers to interact with, and, of course, a whole lot of ways to prepare each pizza.
Where this game shines, however, is not in the relatively simple game-play of making pizzas, but in how the game frames that mechanic through story-telling. Even when you beat all the chapters, there are still seasonal challenges updated bi-monthly.
Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox One & X/S, GeForce Now, PC
Best played with all four possible players, Overcooked is a fun,multi-player game that the whole family can get in on.You’re given a few recipes at a time, and you need to start preparing and serving them as fast as possible to the waiting customers.
The fast pace of this game, paired with the increasingly challenging landscapes and recipes, make for a game that doesn’t get old. A bit of warning though, for anyone approaching this with friends and family, it will test the limits of your teamwork.
Nintendo Switch, Android, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox One & X/S, PC
The point of this game is to take your little-nothing restaurant and make it a smashing success, built from the ground up. Most of the gameplay is cooking for the various customers who show up, and the challenge is to keep up without making a mistake, so if you’ve played this type of game before, you know the drill.
Aside from a story mode, several other features should keep you coming back for more, including a co-op mode, an endurance mode, multiple strike challenges, and a local multiplayer tag-team version of the kitchen.
Nintendo Switch, Android, PlayStation 4, Xbox One & Cloud Gaming, PC
This one is for the cooking sim purists out there; if what you want to do is cook virtual food without worrying about much else, this is the game for you. The developers were focused on realism, on making the physics of the ingredients react the same way they would in real life.
There’s both a sandbox mode and a career mode, meaning that you can cook dishes working towards constant improvement, or you can simply cook whatever you want. You can even set the whole kitchen on fire!
