Creature Kitchen

Creature Kitchen is a relatively short Simulator game where, as the title suggests, you cook, bake and overall prepare dishes of all kind to your local critter friends. You advance in the game by cooking up new and special meals that suit your guests respective tastes by getting information on different recipes from your cookbook, acquiring these ingredients and chopping, mixing, frying, etc. With more and more dishes come more and more new friends and acquaintances for you to interact with as well as an extension of the world around you (in the form of new rooms for you to explore in the hut you are currently watching over). The gameplay is pretty straightforward and nothing complicated. You prepare food by getting the ingredients necessary from outside of the hut or from the storage unit, then you maybe have to slice something in half or you need to mix 2 things together to make another thing before putting all those ingredients in the oven (max. 4 Ingredients) and after a few seconds and...magic...the dish emerges. But this very simplistic gameplay is perfect for such a cozy game in my opinion, although I can see how this constant repetition of essentially the same action over and over again may become a bit of an annoyance for some people. The little critters also are very interesting, each and every one on their own. You go from feeding pancakes to a little bird to meeting what I can only describe as a huge squid on a tree that seems to really like fish. And yet, may it be a ,,big scary monster'' or a little cute innocent looking raccoon, I found myself getting attached to all of them while playing. Its also important to mention that first of all, no one is actually that scary looking and second, that all of them are friendly and only at the very best mildly intimidating by size or sounds. Puzzles also occur sometimes when playing. Although in most cases they are quite easy but also very well thought out. But of course one of the main appeals of this game is the atmosphere and honestly, it's kind of bizzarre but in a positive meaning. On one hand you have a pretty dark and not so well lit enviroment which gives of a more horror-esque feeling when playing, but on the other hand you will experience friendly creatures and an overall cozy vibe which together mixes into this sort of unique game that is undoubtedly fascinating in so many ways. The end (even though I don't want to spoil anything) was also just so interesting and pretty much perfect for this game. Really my only complaint about this game would be a little confusion here and there. At some point, a guest might want a dish that you do not know yet because you have not discovered it yet by investigation and that led, at least for me, to a little reluctance and confusion. I used the internet for my problem, which is why I moved on pretty smoothly tho so it was no big deal but maybe something could be done for a tiny bit more guidance. (Or maybe I am just rlly stupid and overlooked something obvious...) To conclude this review, I really recommend checking out this game for a good 2-3 hours of a unique cozy game that you will not so quickly forget about after finishing it. :D (Please excuse my language and grammatical mistakes, english isn't my mother language and frankly, I wrote this review in a pretty short amount of time lmao)