My feedback/suggestions

[Frosty]

Since the devs seem to be collecting feedback on the game (which is much appreciated) I thought I'd give my feedback.

I think this game has huge potential and gets most things right, but the core game play loop of the actual cooking and serving customers suffers from a problem, which is that it feels like a hybrid between a cooking sim and a cooking arcade game, and it doesn't do either very well.

Customers line up and have timers which adds the element of urgency making you want to rush through the order as fast as possible to stay on deadline. This is more of a cooking arcade game, typically they are satisfying because they give you a simple interface which can be used quickly and easily, and the fun is getting very fast and learning the patterns/rotations. But because the interface is so awkward to use it completely destroys any ability to get faster through practice, there so many button presses you need to do for everything and much of the skill is fine mouse control, ingredients are tiny and often fiddly to pick up, especially something as small as a single slice of chilli. Having to move stuff around on and off the chopping board, open/close drawers, stash cut food into drawers all done a single slice at a time is frustrating. In order to compensate for cooking being so fiddly and time consuming the order times are like 300s long! No real urgency.

But as a Sim it also falls short, the mini-games seem inappropriate for a sim, the cooking of primary ingredients like rice is done 1 portion at a time which is just weird. Ingredients are handled and cut 1 at a time, cutting a single mushroom into 4 slices and then putting 1 single slice onto a pizza as a topping is also weird, it's not sim like at all. It misses the mark as a sim game in a lot of ways.

I think the game would be better taken in a direction that is either more towards a sim game with no time pressure and more realistic cooking, OR the other way towards an arcade game with greater time pressure and an interface you can master and use lighting fast. I personally feel given the current state of development/release it would be easier to move more towards arcade with some simple changes.

1) Remove the weapon wheel, make tool use automatic so when you point and click at pizza sauce it automatically selects the spoon, or at a pizza the pizza peel. The tool wheel is slow and awkward. Maybe keep it for cleaning tools only.
2) Make ingredient handling way simpler. Remove the hand tray completely, allow the player to pick up multiple slices of the same piece of food in their hands. This would allow you to rapidly click 3-4 times and pick up everything you need quickly.
3) Having to fine aim at the ingredients itself is mega frustrating, if you're pointing at the cutting board that should be enough. Same with drawers, if you're pointing at the draw and click it should pick up what is in the tray, you shouldn't need to hover over an exact piece of mushroom. Fine aim takes time and can't be done very fast.
4) Chopping is also slow and unsatisfying, it requires fine aim to chop carefully but when you're finished you're presented with equally sized chopped pieces anyway so it seems pointless to be careful, yet you still can't really do it fast. It'd be better as like a mini game or with auto knife placement so all you need to do is like 5-10 rapid clicks, again make it built for speed.

The above changes would make you 10x faster in the kitchen. You can decrease the order times of customers down to add in more urgency and add more customers in the queue. it would be more arcade-like but it would be way better and more satisfying than it is right now.

[Professor]

I like your ideas.

[76561199318459128]

Thanks. We're working on next update and in the future we will make improvements based on players' feedback from Steam and Discord.

[patrizio.pellizzaro]

Couple of translations errors I spotted for th Italian versions are:
1) When the "Hold E (or other buttons)" is translated erroneously as "Presa", it should be "Tieni premuto";
2) The message for the empty gas canister while cooking is translated as "Hai finito la benzina" should be "Hai finito il gas" as the "benzina" is the gasoline (or sometimes called gas in short),
3) Otherwise the message "Stai esaurendo il gas" while driving should be "Stai esaurendo la benzina (Or more likely il gasolio (Diesel fuel), as usually trucks as big as these food truck use Diesel engines). I'll let you know if I spot other translation errors.
Oh and the Pizza Capricciosa in game is a Ham and Mushroom Pizza (Pizza Prosciutto e funghi), the real Capricciosa has Ham, mushrooms and Artichokes (Carciofi).

[patrizio.pellizzaro]

Oh almost forgot this, when you unlock collectibles such as paint, layouts and car parts, the message "Che hai sbloccato" is grammatically incorrect, it should be "Hai sbloccato" (No preposition at the start of this, otherwise it can be readed as a question "Che hai sbloccato?"

[FirestormMk3]

Yeah, the single slices of ingredients on a whole pizza really throws me. I actually really like the mechanic for spreading sauce, but it feels weird to put a single slice of a mushroom or one single pepperoni circle on a whole pizza. I guess in this city people are okay with just sauce on bread mostly. This is one of the examples I gave a friend who introduced me to the Cook, Serve, Delicious series and loves them of how this game shows promise, but needs some tweaking and hopefully down the line maybe more recipies too. Then it could be a lot like the more sim variation of Cook, Serve, Delicious 3.

Making batches of rice at a time like I tend to do fries would also be very welcome.

[chaosjunky]

Agree with original poster's comments. The interfaces/gameplay design is terrible. I like the idea, and was very much looking forward to this game, but it falls way short. Seems more frustrating than enjoyable. I keep trying to go back and WANT to like it, but I always just quit. It's unplayable for me like this. I hope they do a redesign.

[MoNsTeRxLeGaCy]

Are we able to use a wheel in this game? If not, we need the capability