During Gameforce 2019, a local event in Belgium, we got our hands on Cannibal Cuisine, a game created by Rocket Vulture, a small indie dev based in Belgium. After spending a couple of minutes with an early version, we can say that this might become a very fun party game on Switch and Steam. Time to explain why!
Overcooked… but different
When I first saw Cannibal Cuisine I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had already seen a game like it before. It resembles Overcooked a lot, sharing the cooking theme and camera angle but it comes with its own unique twist. At first, it’s easy to say that this is just a rip-off but once you play it, you’ll understand why Cannibal Cuisine is a genre on its own. The developers were brave enough to combine two genres that aren’t easy to combine. Let’s welcome the bloody third-person slasher cooking game! Yes, you’ve read that right, this is a cooking game combined with third-person slashing. The clue is in its name.
The game is called Cannibal Cuisine and what do cannibals eat? Human flesh. You’re playing on a sunny island where a group of cannibals is trying to prepare a tasty meal to sacrifice to their gods. From time to time, tourists wander around your island, taking in the culture. Of course, as a cannibal, you don’t see human beings, you see piles of fresh meat. By taking them down in a rather bloody way, you get access to their tasty organs to throw on the fire together with some exotic fruit to make a cannibal’s dream lunch. It’s a fun twist and the addition of small hordes of tourists really affects the way you play. Be prepared for the same chaos you’re used to in cooking games but add in the extra challenge of taking down enough tourists before your time runs out.
Work together as one
During our session, we played the local multiplayer with four playable characters. We quickly learned that communication was the key to success. Only by communicating our ingredients and location, we stood a chance to cook and deliver our dishes in time. At the start of the level, we could customize our characters so they would be easy to recognize during the chaos and although it seems like a small detail, it’s crucial for your teamwork. It took us a while to figure it all out but once we tried the same level for the second time, we were getting better and better at it. Thanks to solid teamwork and smart use of our powers, we could deliver dishes at a speed Gordon Ramsay would certainly appreciate.
These special powers are selected at the start of the level and can vary from character to character. Some powers will enable you to run faster, cook faster or even stun your enemies for a while. Our session was a bit too short to really explore the potential benefits of these powers but it’s clear that these will play a crucial role in the actual game. If you master your powers, you’ll become a better cook and thus scoring higher points. It’s an interesting feature that I would love to see in action a bit more.
Early conclusion:
After spending a couple of minutes with Cannibal Cuisine it’s clear that this is shaping up to become a very entertaining game. It takes the Overcooked recipe but adds enough original ingredients to become a new dish entirely. It’s not the easiest game in the genre but I think it will be a great fit on Steam and especially on Nintendo Switch. I can’t wait to see and play more!
