What are the best cooking games on PC? If you want to relax and create mouth-watering masterpieces, or challenge your friends to some kitchen chaos, the wonderful world of cooking games and restaurant games doesn’t disappoint.
You don’t have to be a dab hand in the kitchen to work your way around these cooking games. If, like us, your dinner guests smile politely through a plate of charred chicken and accomplishing the perfection of a Gordon Ramsey special seems like a distant dream, then these games are a much more satisfying way to scratch that cooking itch.
The cooking game genre specifically focuses on restaurant management and whipping up recipes has taken a bit of a backseat since the release of Overcooked 2. Many management games and simulation games incorporate cooking as part of the experience, such as farming in Stardew Valley or setting the kitchen alight in the Sims. So, if you’re after a more authentic cooking game then look no further as we’ve collated a list of the best cooking games on PC from time management to puzzlers.
Here are the best cooking games on PC:
Overcooked 2
In Overcooked 2 you play as a cartoon chef with the sole aim of fulfilling customer orders by following recipes using the various ingredients, utensils, and gadgets around the kitchen. Simple, right? No. Overcooked 2 ramps up the difficulty with each new level, starting out with one ingredient sushi recipes in a standard kitchen, to careering through the clouds on a burning hot air balloon while managing multiple pizza orders. It also means a lot of teamwork, and communication – so a stack of dirty plates doesn’t build up and cost you precious points.
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Overcooked 2 doubles down on the platforming elements of the first game, with levels boasting moving sections of kitchen, jumping puzzles, and even conveyor belts. Plus, you can throw ingredients around this time, which saves on time – thank goodness Onion Kingdom doesn’t have food hygiene ratings.
COOK, SERVE, DELICIOUS! 3?!
The third installment of the popular cooking game series is finally out in Steam Early Access. This time you’ll be travelling in your food truck to participate in the National Foodtruck Championships, which means a greater focus on street foods like ramen, Cuban sandwiches, and poutine – bless you, Québécois cuisine. We particularly love the new chill mode, which makes this one of the most relaxing games around by removing any time limits and just letting you cook at your own pace.
Cooking Simulator
Taking the art of cooking a little more seriously, Cooking Simulator is a first-person cooking game that lets you prep, slice, and dice away at work stations in a top of the range kitchen. The career mode lets you grow your reputation and culinary skills, and unlock new ingredients and recipes along the way. Or if you prefer to kick back and alleviate the pressure with the sandbox mode, you’ll have access to all the recipes and ingredients you could possibly need.
Cooking Simulator can actually improve your cooking skills, as the fully stocked kitchen has an abundance of ingredients and equipment that test your cooking abilities. A lot of Cooking Simulator is physics-based, which adds a degree of tension to even basic burger flips – the possibilities for messing things up horribly are endless.
BATTLE CHEF BRIGADE
This anime game has been included for its beautiful hand drawn art style and RPG twist on cooking games. You’ll need to hunt and catch your ingredients before taking them back to the kitchen – the better the cookware you can loot, the better the dish you’ll end up with This intriguing cooking game combines 2D brawler combat against monsters in different locations and a match 3-inspired cooking puzzler to win contests for the best meal.
Battle Chef Brigade is available as a local multiplayer or single-player campaign, with a variety of challenges and modes that keep it feeling fresh.
Dungeon Munchies
Far from a conventional cooking game, Dungeon Munchies is a 2D platform game where your best bet at survival is to craft and perfect recipes to get as much nutrition out of the ingredients as possible. Oh, and those ingredients just so happen to be your enemies, so slay some broccoli demons and you can steam them up to use later on. Dungeon Munchies is currently in Steam Early Access, but is already getting Michelin stars from Steam reviewers.
Minecraft
For mushroom stew fanatics, we imagine Minecraft easily makes the list of best cooking games, but the rest of us might be left hungry for a little more variety when it comes to Minecraft food preparation. Fortunately for the culinarily inclined, with a few Minecraft mods and these wonderful Minecraft kitchen ideas you can acquire a fully functioning kitchen in which you can whip up anything from asparagus quiche to Yorkshire pudding.
There are several mods that add more depth to cooking in Minecraft, but we recommend these two. Pam’s Harvestcraft adds over 275 foods and recipes to the game, and the trees and crops from which you’ll harvest your ingredients. Cooking for Blockheads will help make sense of the chaos by providing you with a cookbook that shows you everything you can make with the ingredients you have on-hand. It also adds all the blocks you’ll need to make a fully functioning kitchen – an oven, a sink, a fridge etc – you know what goes in a kitchen.
Restaurant games
Chef: A Restaurant Tycoon Game
This tycoon restaurant game focuses a little less on the cooking and more on management games, complete with a customisable chef and a range of style options for your new eatery. There are plenty of recipes plus a recipe maker, so you can curate your own menu and restaurant theme, allowing you to be the best at burgers – if that’s your thing.
As you progress, you’ll unlock skills and develop your menu, and the world will react to your choices. It’s all about balancing the cost of your dishes and providing a service customers will return for. It is quite challenging, but the results are worth it. It’s still in Steam Early Access, so expect a few bugs and missing features.
Cooking Dash
A time and restaurant management game with a kooky story campaign delivered as comic strips. Cooking Dash uses an old-school animation style and satisfying level design to keep you hooked. Cooking Dash ramps up the difficulty as it progresses, but is one of the more relaxing games to switch off to.
Cake Mania Main Street
If you’re after something a little sweeter, Cake Mania Main Street follows on from the Cake Mania Collection, adding in new sweet and savoury favourites. Reprising the role of Jill, you’ll expand across Main Street taking on new shops and attractions to transform the town.
Of course, all of this will be through baking and cooking, unlocking levels and dealing with challenging new customers. Cake Mania is a time management game, that combines cheesy dialogue, satisfying timed levels, and colourful treats.
Cookie Clicker
Featured as one of our best idle games for PC, Cookie Clicker does what it says on the tin. If you’re into your baked goods and want to spend some time clicking a giant cookie to gain awards, Cookie Clicker is a click away.
This baking game relies solely on your clicks to progress, with each click earning you a cookie, the further your progress you can hire cookie making grandmas or sow fields of cookie seeds. There’s only one real goal – cookie.
New cooking games coming soon
Bakery Simulator
The realistic baking game, Bakery Simulator, will require you to master all the skills it takes to be a virtual master baker, including painstakingly measuring out ingredients, operating potentially deadly appliances, and trying to navigate a volatile physics engine.
Operating slightly differently to a restaurant management game, Bakery simulator will task you with sourcing ingredients, learning how to make an assortment of breads, and – naturally – avoiding death by fire.
Cooking games and restaurant games don’t always have to appeal to the chef in us; they can be colourful time management games, or require some serious recipe grinding. Cooking games and restaurant games are a relaxing way to pass the time, whether that’s by throwing tomatoes at your friend to chop in Overcooked, or dragging a monster home for your evening meal in Battle Chef Brigade.
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