Developer: Silent Owl
Platform: PC (Reviewed)
Genre: Action, Adventure
Publisher: Perfect Gen, GrabTheGames
Kitchen Wars is a fast-paced party game. The game was developed by Silent Owl and published by Perfect Gen and GrabTheGames. Kitchen Wars is similar to games like Penguin Diner and Plate Up, but with a more chaotic twist. The game is currently in Early Access.
Kitchen Wars can be played multiplayer or single-player with up to 8 players. Whilst having tried the game either locally or online, there was not much of a difference in terms of the game performance, but in terms of experience, having a larger party is so much more fun. For instance, we had initially started with a 1v1 and found that we were more focused on getting orders out rather than brawling. The game was so much more fun with more people on each team, best being 3v3 or 4v4. That does not mean that the game does not hold up with just two players, but it can get a bit boring quickly. The only issue that players might experience, if they have not bought the game among friends and wish to play online, is that there are only two servers: Europe and Asia. The servers themselves are not active with players as the game is recently been released, but it is worth picking up to create a chaotic mess between the kitchens.
Kitchen Wars features a simple cartoonish visual, which initially had me thinking of something from Roblox. The character designs are goofy and nicely detailed to the level of this game, which makes the visuals pleasing. Additionally, there are various skins that you can pick from, which gives players a nice variety. These skins can include a hotdog suit, a waiter, a businesswoman, a police officer, and many more. The skins can easily be unlocked as you progress by winning games and earning XP. In terms of the kitchen layout, it is simple but effective. You get to see the cook pace around in the kitchen you get to watch customers walk in and out of the restaurant. Little animations that are accompanied by the designs are effortless in this chaotic game. I especially love the animations that come from using items, punching players, and throwing them over to their side. The colours and lighting are vibrant and create a fun atmosphere in the game. I enjoyed that you have the option to pick between a few kitchen layouts, which seem to be inspired by YouTubers. I was able to recognise the Nogla theme, which I thought was a lovely touch to the game.
In terms of the soundtrack of the game, it’s goofy and perfect. You have funky, amped up music playing in the background. As customers enter the restaurant, they make a loud, quirky ‘hmm’ noise that I always found myself copying. Even the sound effects of getting whacked or thrown over are so fun and liven up the game.
The controls for Kitchen Wars are simple and work well either on keyboard/mouse or controller. The tutorial that is required to play at the beginning of the game is nice and short, highlighting everything in the game that needs to be done. My only issue with the game at times was the auto-picking and auto-dropping food. Initially, in the tutorial, it was instructed to press the J button for that interaction, but in-game, it was automatic, which led to orders being delivered to other customers who had more patience.
Kitchen Wars is a game where you serve up dishes to customers while competing with the kitchen next door to you. It is the epitome of competition between two restaurants, and you can take matters into your own hands and destroy their business with weapons that can do a range of things. The mission of the game is for one of the kitchens to win by getting the other kitchens ‘HP’ to fully deplete. Loss of HP is caused by several factors: misplaced chairs, losing customers, and not cleaning up messes.
There is quite literally no limit to how much you can go up and beat the other players, or throw items over, but it mainly just depends on the coins you get from serving dishes. The game works where the dishes are instantly provided by the cook in your kitchen, and you have to serve them to the customer before their patience runs out. If their patience runs out, they will leave the restaurant unhappy. If you deliver the dishes over to the customer on time, you get coins (which max out at 50) that can be used to buy items to throw over, or melee weapons. Throwing these things will make a mess in the other team’s kitchen and cause chaos. Players need to clean up the mess so things do not get even more chaotic otherwise, the game will end too soon. As you serve more orders, you start to fill out a bar and get upgrades after each ‘checkpoint’. After a certain number of days, you will also receive additional chairs and tables that will increase the speed at which customers come and go. The game progressively gets harder and harder.
In our experience of this game, playing it with more people on each team was so much fun because, in most occurrences, one person would be serving the food, whilst others would sabotage the kitchens and go around picking and beating up the enemy team. My most hated item in the entire game would have to be the sheep because that caused pure chaos, and imagine getting two sheep thrown at your restaurant with so many customers occupying chairs and your team running around like crazy. I do like that the items on the kiosks randomise, and you can get things from a pan, super glue, and much more. The game is such a laugh and worth the price because you can easily have a few hours of fun, and come back to the game when you’d like.
As the game is currently in Early Access, I am excited to see if the developers have any plans or updates with Kitchen Wars. I think it would be a nice idea to add a different type of game mode or allow players to choose between upgrades rather than having set upgrades at each ‘checkpoint’.
Now, we were very thankful to have been provided with codes to play with a party. One of the players, Randomnamez, said the following, “Kitchen Wars takes the well-worn co-op cooking genre and flips it on its head with one brilliant twist – sabotage. While games like Overcooked and Cooking Simulator have saturated Steam and consoles with their frantic food prep, Kitchen Wars adds a deliciously underhanded dimension that transforms the entire experience. At its core, the gameplay remains familiar. You’ll set tables and serve hungry customers in your restaurant, racing against the clock to maximise profits. But here’s where things get spicy – your rival restaurants aren’t just competing for customers, they’re actively working to destroy you. Need chairs for your incoming party of four? Good luck keeping them when competitors can swipe them right under your nose. Are you getting a perfect streak of orders? Watch out for devastating power-ups that can derail your kitchen in seconds. These sabotage mechanics are devilishly simple to grasp, but add layers of strategy and hilarious chaos to every session. What makes Kitchen Wars special isn’t complex systems or revolutionary graphics – it’s how this one mechanic completely transforms familiar gameplay into something that feels fresh, competitive, and downright mischievous. If you’ve grown tired of purely cooperative cooking sims, Kitchen Wars serves up exactly the competitive edge the genre needs. The game definitely needs better team balancing for uneven matches. We played 2-vs-1, and it was a complete massacre—the solo player got absolutely destroyed with zero chance of winning. For a game that’s all about sabotage, you’d think they’d have some kind of handicap system or power scaling when teams aren’t equal. That’s honestly my only real complaint about an otherwise fantastic game. The developers just need to figure out how to make unbalanced matches fair, because right now it’s not even worth trying if you’re outnumbered.”
And lastly, Moody had the following to say, “I found the game to be great as it has a new spin on the normal kitchen party games. Kitchen Wars was so much fun, I had first played it in a 1v1, and it was a nice run where we mainly tried completing achievements, but when we had more players on each team, the game was absolute chaos. Can I just say that the robot upgrade when we were playing a 1v1 round seemed like it was out to sabotage me. The robot will grab orders and bring them to the nearest customer rather than the one getting mad, which at times costs me to lose so many customers. I don’t know how many times I have gotten annoyed at the robot, but it’s an unreasonable amount. Also, when I saw the price of this game, it is worth buying Kitchen Wars. I would even say that with future updates, you can easily increase the price by adding new items, maybe levels, upgrades, or modes to enhance the gameplay even more.”
Kitchen Wars is a game that everyone can play. A fun, chaotic game that you can play with friends or family, online or locally. The game lets you go crazy by using obstructive items to mess up the other kitchen team from delivering their orders. You can also just walk in and beat them up, which is so much fun. The game has a quirky design to it, which adds to the mayhem that unleashes in the kitchen. Be sure to check out Kitchen Wars!
Overall: 9/10
This is S & S. We are world game explorers. We play games. We have played over 10,000+ games! We travel, we write reviews AND we play more games!!!!
