What’s Cookin’?: Cooked With Love Brings Being a Messy College Queer to Life Through Food
Representation is something we as an industry talk about frequently. Often, it’s something larger companies producing media still drop the ball on, despite the progress that has been made. We certainly still have a long way to go when it comes to capturing the many nuances within most identities. That’s why Cooked With Love–a visual novel from STARDUST SODA–caught me by surprise. Its representation of queerness goes deeper than the different pronoun, hair, and clothing options you’re afforded, depicting what it’s like to be a messy queer in college through a cute, if cheesy, story about a dinner date gone awry.
In Cooked With Love your player character is a university student who has finally worked up the nerve to ask out their crush. She agrees, but of course, there’s a catch; after receiving some money to cover your date from your grandma, your character realizes they’ve lost their wallet. With their himbo roommate out of cash as well, your character ultimately decides to try cooking dinner for their date–despite never having cooked before in their life.
This is where the game-ier side of things comes out. You have to create a three-course meal from the ingredients these trashy college kids have in their pantry and fridge. The offerings include unwrapped instant ramen, fish sticks, maple syrup, protein powder, bananas, egg salad, and cream of celery soup mix. To create a dish, you have to combine a main component or two with a “seasoning” to produce something that’s either an inedible mess, or a vaguely funky course.
The whole “college students eating ramen” thing isn’t new, but Cooked With Love’s depiction of messy queer college kids goes deeper than that. From stealing a roommate’s $5 wine (and thinking $5 for wine is expensive) to making charcuterie out of a cheese stick and balsamic vinegar, this game just clearly gets what it’s like to be in your early twenties and just being kind of a disaster while weirdly having fun with it.
Cooked With Love takes the set dressing of this dinner date to further expound on these characters’ complicated relationships, habits, and feelings. One route allows you to explore a past makeout encounter with aforementioned himbo roommate and the implication of that, all unlocked by having your weird homemade dinner with him instead of your original date. Another allows you to explore both your character’s more hedonistic past and vulnerabilities, as well as their crush’s.
Seeing these conversations reminded me of my own college experiences with cheap liquor, too many random hookups at parties, and getting through it all by scraping food together to share with my roommates and friends. What constitutes comfort food often depends on where you’re at in your life, and this game understands that in a very realistic way. You’ve always gotta have dessert, even if it’s just a granola bar drenched in syrup. Though not the star of the game, the cooking in Cooked With Love is intentional in demonstrating how meals bring people together in a variety of ways, both eliciting memories and creating new ones.
