Chef Umami

Usually I don’t like paying for games unless I’ve played them before on a different platform and know about it (Papa Louie Games, Diner Dash, etc). The game is fairly new and clearly needs a lot of improvement. However, the design and idea is supreme. I like the way how I’m able to cook the food using different tools and ingredients. I like the layout and imaging. What could improve is better quality of placing foods on top/with each other. When building sandwiches, it’s hard to place the different toppings on top of each other. It would be nice for our data to be saved when closing the app, because right now if we close it, it starts us over from the beginning. And the recipes should be shuffled and not in order so that I will be surprised at what the next customer wants instead of knowing since it’s in order. Also, more recipes and customers would be grand. The grading for the food is off a bit, and if the customers could order both food and drinks at the same time. That would be even better! I can see how this game will have a nice feature. As long as the designer is listening and making improvements, gameplay will be so much better! Overall, as of right now, I am grading 4 stars.

I was instantly enticed by this game and for good reason. This game is absolutely adorable and sort of addicting. It does have some problems but there things that overtime will be fixed and I’m okay with that. Overall this game is really adorable and is using a mechanic that hasn’t been seen in other games like this Critique and recommending✨ For a recommendation I would really like to see more randomized and altogether more requests for things to cook because overtime it becomes repetitive and a little bland when you only cook the same things. I also find the controls to be a little wonky some times and when dumping the food into a different dish the contents sometimes disappear out of reach. This is a fun thing at times having the items have a realistic feel but can be really tedious. I also can get a bit frustrated when plating, most of the time the food is unbalanced and doesn’t look very appealing. Just for a thought it would be really nice if there was a sort of menu option. Like for instance you can make your own menus? Or have a way to just cook random things without people recommending things? I think that would add a lot of more parts to the game.

I love playing this game. The sound effects are satisfying, and the mechanics of the game are somewhat smooth. Some bugs I’ve noticed is food falling off the plate (when surfer girl and her friend, the ice cube, order their Swiss cheese breakfast bagels and pineapple/banana juice, I pick up the tray of finished food and the bagels just slide off and I have to restart). Another thing is for most orders, usually something I have to stack, like sandwiches, the food falls right through the plate to where I can’t see it, or falls through another food item under it, whenever I try to place it. It gets annoying because I like to be able to see what I’m serving, because I can’t tell if I have the order right or not. Also, a lot of times when I’m pouring chopped food into either a skillet or wok or plate or cutting board, bits and pieces will roll off and onto the floor! I’d like there to be a fix for this, which will hopefully make the game run a lot smoother. Also, little red demon girl seems very difficult to satisfy! I can never get more than three stars with her... it may be that the order ticket isn’t very specific, but I’d like to know how to get five stars for her orders. Altogether though, this game is very cute, and is great to play when passing time away!

This is a cute game, and i acknowledge this is probably geared towards children, however if I’m having trouble no doubt kids are. The concept is fun, however there are many flaws. When I first picked up the game I noticed there was 360 viewing, but also the ability to swipe. There should be settings where you can choose one or the other, because it will bring instability when using both at the same time. As I thought, it was hard to move the screen and keep it still. The sensitivity levels for the device movement are too high, I don’t know much about app development, but I’m sure it can be fixed so either it can minimally move up and down, or give the option to choose swiping over physically moving. I’m sure a kid with an iPad would have more trouble than me keeping it stable. Maybe this is a user error, however it is so incredibly difficult to interact with items (i.e bread instantly after the introductory customer) anytime I tried to grab something, it wouldn’t move to where I wanted it. If I clicked it, it spawned, however I couldn’t move it after that point. This is probably my longest review for 2 major faults, it’s probably because I whole heartily believe this game could have better playability.

This game has a lot of potential and is relatively fun but there are just some problems that can’t be overlooked. First, when I try to plate my food, half of what I had chopped simply spills off the plate so the presentation always ends up looking messy and unappealing. This spilling also occurs when I empty all the cutting board’s contents onto either the grill or frying pan. Also, there are occasional bugs when I can only cut the left half of the onion, for example, or can only cut certain parts of a food. The customers always ask for the same orders which becomes pretty boring to make after a while, some variation would enhance the game quite a bit. Also, some customers, regardless of what I make, always give the same rating, either one star or five. I would like to see them base their rating off of what I actually make rather than a pre-set review. I would also like to see more sauces and spices even and have the sauces and spices affect the shape and more so the color of the food. For example, maybe garlic powder turns the food whiter or boiling off the water in a food shrinks it. Good concept for a game, but there needs to be some bug fixes and more variation.