Cooking Simulator Review Summary

An enjoyable game with rewarding cooking and creative freedom, but clunky controls, persistent bugs, and frequent crashes detract from the experience.

Game is highly enjoyable: Players frequently describe the game as great, wonderful, addictive, and excellent. The positive reception is widespread across feedback, indicating strong overall satisfaction.

Cooking mechanics are rewarding: The hands-on cooking mechanics are satisfying and make players feel like a real chef. Many reviews specifically praise the cooking simulation for being fun and engaging.

Creative freedom in cooking: Players love the ability to cook whatever they want, create their own recipes, and prepare a wide variety of dishes. This freedom is a major highlight.

Helps learn real cooking: Some players mention the game helped them learn to cook in real life, thanks to realistic ingredients and recipes. It also serves as a good learning tool for culinary skills.

Realistic cooking simulation: The game is praised for its realistic dynamics, physics, and preparation steps that mimic real-life cooking. It provides a deep and satisfying cooking experience.

Controls are clunky: Players frequently complain about cumbersome, unintuitive, and awkward controls that make the game frustrating to play. Issues include chopping, cutting, flipping, and general movement being difficult to master.

Bugs and glitches persist: The game contains numerous bugs, including game-breaking issues, physics glitches, crashes, and freezing, which severely impact playability and enjoyment. Some bugs remain unfixed for long periods.

Repetitive and monotonous gameplay: Many players find the game becomes boring after a short time due to repetitive tasks and lack of variety. The single-player mode especially suffers from monotony.

Recipes are confusing: Recipe descriptions are often incorrect or unclear, requiring illogical steps to complete dishes. This leads to confusion and low scores even when following instructions.

Dishes break too easily: Plates and dishes are overly fragile, shattering even when handled gently. Broken pieces can end up in food, ruining meals and frustrating players.

Core cooking simulation experience: Players praise the game as a realistic cooking simulation featuring physics-based interactions, chopping, multitasking, cleaning, and fire hazards. It simulates real chef work and kitchen operations with order-based shifts.

Realistic simulation of chef work: The game simulates real-life cooking with attention to timing, mess management, and kitchen workflow, making it feel like a hyper-realistic kitchen simulator.

Diverse cuisine and techniques: The simulation covers numerous cooking techniques including chopping, seasoning, frying, boiling, baking, blending, and pouring, with recipes ranging from simple dishes to complex ones like lobster and shrimp.

Multiple game modes available: The game offers career mode with progression, earnings, and restaurant development, along with sandbox mode for free creativity and experimentation. Relax mode with time-limited orders is also noted.

Star rating and recipe progression: Dishes are evaluated with a star rating system, and players unlock recipes as they progress. This adds a layer of challenge and feedback to the cooking process.

Frequent crashes and startup failures: The game frequently crashes during play or on startup, and some users report hard crashes that affect the entire computer or result in an infinite loading loop.

Poor optimization makes game unplayable: Critics describe the game as poorly optimized and unplayable due to performance issues, stuttering, and instability, even on systems meeting recommended specs.

Severe performance issues and low FPS: Many players report terrible frame rates even on the lowest graphics settings with decent hardware, with some specific examples of single-digit FPS (2 FPS) and under 20 FPS.

Poor performance on laptops: The game suffers from heavy lag and crashes on laptop hardware, including crashes on startup and overheating issues.

Long loading times and slow startup: Loading times are excessively long, with one player reporting 244 hours of playtime mostly spent waiting; startup is also slow.

Great for cooking/simulation fans: Players strongly recommend the game to fans of simulation games, cooking enthusiasts, and beginners interested in cooking simulation.

Best for real-life cooks: Reviewers highlight the game as an excellent choice for people who enjoy cooking in real life or consider themselves aspiring chefs.

Buy only on sale: Multiple reviews suggest waiting for a sale before purchasing, as the game is not considered worth the full price.

Not worth full price: A significant number of players feel the game is only worth buying when discounted, and not at its regular price.

Fun and humorous gameplay: Reviewers appreciate the game for its fun, lighthearted, and chaotic kitchen experience that delivers entertainment.

Community fair range: $5.00 - $15.00.

Game completion: 8.0h.

Session length: 0.7h.

Cooking Simulator starts with a steep learning curve and unclear tutorial, but becomes deeply addictive and fun once players get past the initial frustration and learn the controls and mechanics.

Friction: poor tutorial that is insufficient and sometimes breaks; fiddly and unintuitive controls; steep learning curve for cooking terminology and tools; repetitive early tasks with little variety; lack of clarity on mechanics like cleaning and using tools.

Unlock drivers: learning the controls through practice; understanding core game mechanics via trial and error; unlocking new recipes and kitchen appliances; becoming comfortable with the physics and task loops.

Authentic Chef Simulator: Methodical and careful, follows recipes precisely, aims for perfect execution. Motivation: To practice and enjoy realistic cooking simulation from the comfort of home. Stance: buy.

Chaos Comedian: Experimental and destructive, ignores recipes, embraces bugs and glitches for laughs. Motivation: To have fun with silly physics and create funny scenarios. Stance: sale.

Frustrated Perfectionist: Tries to play properly but gets annoyed by jank, often quitting or struggling with broken mechanics. Motivation: To enjoy a well-crafted simulation, but the current state prevents that enjoyment. Stance: no buy.

The Windows 12-15GB VRAM cohort reports poor performance with severe frame rate issues even on the lowest settings.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: negative. Users report terrible frame rates even on lowest settings.

Steam Deck: User feedback focuses almost entirely on gameplay difficulty and control frustrations. No reviews mention Steam Deck-specific technical issues such as crashes, anti-cheat errors, launcher problems, or performance concerns. The game appears functionally stable on the platform but may present a steep learning curve due to controller input challenges.

Monetization: The game offers a base purchase plus multiple paid DLC packs that add new modes and content. User feedback highlights that many features are locked behind these DLCs, which some see as excessive fragmentation. However, the monetization model is traditional expansion-based and does not include microtransactions, gacha, or pay-to-win elements. Performance issues in one DLC and mixed value perceptions are noted.

Unclear blame attribution: A single user suggests that the issue might not be the game's fault, indicating potential user error or system incompatibility. This feedback is isolated and lacks specific details.