Trinket Studios are a group of three independent developers from Chicago, and they’re working on something that is quite special. If you’ve ever wished that cooking games were more than just plainly preparing ingredients and serving them up to X amount of customers, than you’re quite literally in for a treat.
Their latest, Battle Chef Brigade, is a mix of classic fantasy idioms like spellcasting, monster slaying and role playing, and the ferocious cooking competitions seen today across television, movies, and so on. Trinket is describing the game as “fantasy Iron Chef,” and it’s definitely coming off exactly like that. Most of the game will take place in the “battle pantry,” the area in which you’ll regain health or boost your power by eating some ingredients, or even fight rival chefs who come in to get the best ingredients.
The game will be made up of three core stages, monster slaying, returning to the kitchen to prepare it’s meat or ingredients, and then having your meals judged by a panel of experts. When you’re out adventuring, the game will play out like a 2D action/platformer, as you defeat creatures and animals with your weapons you’ll collect their meat or bones, and so on. Depending on what you collect, you could have an easier or a harder time preparing the food for the judges when you return.
Although the definite style of combat has not been completely finalized, the current prototype in game has loads of monsters to take down in a variety of ways. Trinket Studios cite Samurai Gunn and Awesomenauts as examples of great action, and the kind of action they’re looking for. If you haven’t played either of those games yet, I implore you to do so now. Anyway, back to the game – all of the killing of monsters will take place in the battle pantry, which is also a work in progress. Think of the battle pantry as an arena in which both monster slaying and chef battling takes place.
Enough talk about the combat – I’m sure you’re wondering how the cooking will actually work in Battle Chef Brigade? They’re paying close attention to how recipes work in game, so naturally there will be a mix of classic dishes and completely new stuff. An example was given where you could make a normal pie, or you could add some fruit or meat into the pie, making it into a weird fruit-meat-seafood pie. The key thing is finding a balance between predetermined recipes and adding in a literal slice of something new.
The recipes and food pairings in Battle Chef Brigade are made up of both real world ingredients and crazy stuff you’d see in high fantasy. The gamut of ingredients range from water and flour to eyeball eggs and unicorn horn shavings. The fact that they’re embracing high fantasy allows them to include ingredients that can have very different implications, like dragon meat. They did describe dragon meat as tough, and that it is an acceptable (yet more exotic) ingredient, while chicken is more expected and predictable.
Battle Chef Brigade is set for release on PC and yet to be confirmed consoles later this year. The team at Trinket Studios, Tom Eastman, Eric Huang, and Ben Perez, hope to show off the game in a playable build as early PAX East, which takes place in Boston, between April 11th-13th. You can check out lots of animations and stuff on their official website.
