Single-screen platformers were quite popular in arcades in the mid-1980’s. Today, not so much, but there are modern games that have some similar gameplay concepts at times. Culinary Wizard is one such game. It is a side-scrolling action platformer that I recently featured on a Friday’s Free Games! a couple weeks ago. When I saw the game’s trailer, I though the tone of it was really funny and light hearted, and it made me want to try it out!
Story and Gameplay
After being fired from your job as an apprentice chef, you learn that a new position has opened up in a weird place outside of town. You go to it, and discover that your new boss is a giant, super muscular chef! Oddly enough, one of his problems is that his food is alive, and you need to defeat them to make the recipes that people mention to you. Each of these ingredients is a different enemy with a variety of characteristics, behavior when they see you, attack patterns, and so on.
Although this isn’t a single-screen platformer, it still reminds me of BurgerTime. Both titles have living food, ladders, and small expressive sprites. What you do in Culinary Wizard is run around in an area using your knife and other tools to defeat the food. Some of the items you can earn include a meat tenderizer that deals a slow, but heavy attack; a spice jar that has salt, which can be thrown to stun enemies; and a spatula that allows for a double jump. Once all the ingredients are beaten, you move on to the exit to continue your culinary adventure.
The game is made up of at least three major areas that open up after beating the previous ones. Each area has 8 levels, with some sort of final challenge at the end. While playing, you unlock new abilities, some of which I have already mentioned. This is one of the best things about the game. The control for Culinary Wizard is good, easy to handle, and uses about five buttons on the controller. One of the strengths of the game is its good design for progression of your character as you advance through the story. Along the way, you become more proficient in dealing with enemies and beating them effectively based on the weapons and tools you have at your disposal.
Music and Sound Effects
While I wouldn’t listen to the Culinary Wizard’s music outside of playing the game, I enjoyed it well enough. The compositions fit the tone of the areas well, and I especially liked it when one piece was particularly chill and relaxed. It made sense with the vibe for that part of the game and what was happening in the story. Typically, the soundtrack is reasonably fast-paced, which is all right based on the gameplay style. What I liked more was the sound effects. The reason being that they tended to be distinct for each food you face, and make their noises when they see you, or are going to attack. This means you can use sound effects to know what enemies are nearby even if you haven’t seen them on the screen yet. This helps telegraph how to respond to different situations as your familiarity with the game and playing skill improves. This is another area of quality gameplay design that is really cool to see in a free title!
Game Length and Bonuses
I’d say it takes about three to four hours to complete the main game in Culinary Wizard, depending on skill level. Although, it could take longer because the last set of levels in the main game is a bit of a challenge. I even considered giving up at one point because I wasn’t having too much fun anymore after over an hour of attempts to beat the game. However, when I did finish it, I had a great sense of achievement having done so! The game also features extra bonus content that is distinct from the main game and adds a good deal to the whole package, which I really like. Beyond the extra levels, there’s also additional bonuses such as achievements and cosmetic looks for your main character that are unlocked as the game goes on.
What I Didn’t Like
So far, I think this review has been pretty glowing, but I don’t think the game is perfect. There are a couple of things that irritate me about it. Like some other side scrolling platformers, the ladders seemed kind of sticky. Occasionally, it’d be difficult for me to jump off of them, even though I know I was pressing the correct button. Also, there was some graphical glitching that would happen with one of the tools that happened to me a couple of times. It doesn’t impact gameplay, but it makes the sprite of your little chef to look different than he should. Just pressing the tool’s button a couple of times seemed to fix it. Finally, I played the whole game with a ton of black space around the play area that was wasted space. After recording hours of footage and preparing my images for this review, I discovered that Culinary Wizard doesn’t scale graphics the way I would expect. What I mean by this is that if you play the game in 1440p, then the amount of black space around the screen will probably be large. Thus, making the viewable area of the game to be smaller than what is shown on the game’s sales page. If it isn’t done automatically, manually change your monitor to 1080p before starting the game to make it appear the way it is shown on the sales page. I have manually adjusted my game images to have a similar amount of black space compared to what is found on Steam.
Conclusion
If there’s anything I can say about this title, it’s that it has a great sense of completeness. Yet, it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. The number of areas and levels is reasonable, especially considering that this a free game. All major aspects of the game have a good degree of polish that is admirable for a game such as this. Overall, I think this a quality free game and worth playing for fans of the genre.
To see this review with pictures, and to explore other retro-related content, please check out this link: [url=https://cheapretrogaming.com/2025/07/17/culinary-wizard-review-quality-2d-action-platformer-defeat-food-prepare-recipes/]https://cheapretrogaming.com/2025/07/17/culinary-wizard-review-quality-2d-action-platformer-defeat-food-prepare-recipes/[/url]
