Year in Review 2018 Letter Series: Battle Chef Brigade-Kitchen Soup for the Soul
“Coffee Talk feels like the kind of game that you could think of as your own refuge space, and that sort of experience is just as valuable as any big budget mega-game that sells itself on maximum interactivity or realistic graphical fidelity. There should be a space for cozy in games, and it’s heartening to see projects like Coffee Talk exemplifying this design” Dante Douglas said in his Paste piece about the value of comfy games. Battle Chef Brigade is another game that falls directly into this genre, and that plays a big part in why I love it so much.
I don’t know if there’s any place on earth more cozy to me than a kitchen. Most of my warm memories have kitchens as their backdrop, and many center on cooking for and with the people I care about most. Battle Chef Brigade, while seemingly focused on competition, really does highlight the sense of comfort and love I’ve always found within kitchens.
As a kid, I spent a lot of time learning to cook with my dad. He’s not the most expressive or emotional man, but in the kitchen he becomes someone new, someone softer and brighter. He taught me the tastes of dozens of spices, how to measure by feel alone, and above all, how to chase my creativity and try new things. Cooking became something that was woven into the core of who I was, and I aspired to one day be a great chef.
That dream has long since been shelved, but cooking is still part of who I am, and recapturing that feeling of being a kid in the kitchen will always make me feel warm and fuzzy. It’s why I still binge cooking shows, and basically any cooking-related media that focuses on the joy of creating good food and the value of doing it with those you love. Battle Chef Brigade manages to effortlessly capture how cooking can inspire and encourage experimental art, and connect people across the multiple kinds of relationships we all have, be it family, friends, or even rivals.
Much of the game focuses on Mina’s home life: her parents and older sister. They’re a family who have always worked in the food business, running a local restaurant in the Windy Village, and passing culinary knowledge across generations. Just as my father had high culinary hopes and taught his child all he knew about cooking, Mina’s mother did the same for her, even sharing her daughter’s dream of becoming a Battle Chef when she was a young woman. Despite occasional friction amongst family members, things inevitably work out, and they’re all brought together through their love of making great food, and each other.
The friends Mina makes while competing are also won through their mutual love of cooking. Kirin, one of the first characters you meet in the city, helps Mina (even though it doesn’t make sense strategically) because she can see Mina’s passion and it mirrors Kirin’s own. Thrash is willing to help Mina practice, and loves to compete with her because it’s an avenue for them to share in the joy of what they both love to do and become better together. This can even be said of Mina’s rival, Weiz. Their relationship is only repaired once he and Mina have a cook-off and are able to see each other’s skills at work. Respect and even friendship are found through this experience of working towards a common, if contested, goal and being inspired by each other’s work.
The joy and passion surrounding cooking in this game is a part of its very core, and comes through in every battle, mini-game, or moment of practice. There’s so much variety and excitement to be found in each battle you face. A variety of equipment, recipe books that offer different ways of challenging yourself, and finding ways to manipulate difficult or even dangerous ingredients make the game rewarding and fresh no matter how often you play. After all the hours I’ve poured in across multiple platforms, there’s still so much to learn and experiment with.
Even the online portions of the game center on improving your own skills and climbing the leaderboard, as opposed to head to head, real time competitions. When I play BCB online, I’m not striving to fight it out with a friend or even a rando I’ve been pitted against; I’m working to adapt to new tools I normally don’t use and become better at the game, because I absolutely adore how it depicts and embodies cooking.
There have been games that have kept me afloat when I was at my lowest, games that have let me see myself depicted (at least to a degree), and games that have reflected my own trauma directly back at me, but this is the first that has captured my notions of coziness so completely. When I’m in the world of Battle Chef Brigade, I always find myself wanting to stay for just a little bit longer. Just one more minute of comfort and warmth. Just one more minute where things don’t feel so hard, and I know all I have to do to feel like everything will be okay is walk into the kitchen.
