Chef Wars Game Takes You On A Geographical Cooking Adventure Around The World

If you’ve ever dreamed of training to be a chef in a five-star restaurant, then Chef Wars may be just the game for you. Though many mobile cooking games focus on time management, Chef Wars takes you on an entirely different kind of journey that meshes crafting, battling and adventure elements along with intermittent geography along the way. The game is casual in nature, so you can pick it up or drop it at a moment’s notice. Yet there’s so much to unlock and discover, you’ll find yourself getting sucked in every time you play.

Chef Wars begins by introducing you to the game’s heroine, Sylvie. Sylvie is an amateur chef training in Paris with a dream of following in her father’s illustrious footsteps. You soon learn that Sylvie’s father died unexpectedly, leaving her alone and wondering if foul play may have been involved. Sylvie suspects her father’s old friend Baron von Pork has something to do with his death — as well as the sudden disappearance of his secret recipe formula. This turn of events leads Sylvie on a mission to become one of the world’s best chefs and win a Cheffy Award, and to unlock every clue she can about her father’s mysterious death.

With the underlying story in place, players are thrown straight into the meat of the game, participating in various cooking competitions around France, Europe and later the world. In each battle, your character gets a set of three themes the judges will be using to evaluate the offering. These themes can be regional, require specific ingredients or cater to a particular audience. For example, Sylvie’s first challenge asks her to cook up something French, Earthy and Luxury. In addition to judging based on how closely your recipe matches the theme, dishes can earn extra power points by including ingredients the judges favor, but there’s no way of knowing what ingredients they prefer, until you unlock one. As you and your opponent present your dishes, whichever one receives the higher score is the winner. Though there’s no penalty for losing, other than the loss of the entry fee, if your cook wins, he or she will be awarded fame, money and sometimes special ingredients or gems.

The game is made up of a large a sprawling map, and initially, players will probably want to remain in the French region, as there are plenty of towns and cities to explore. As you uncover a new town or city, you’ll receive a gift of a key resource in the area. For each town you uncover, you have the option to purchase local goods, mingle with townsfolk to acquire hints and tips or participate in local battles. However, you can’t visit cities until they are unlocked. Cities become unlocked through boss battles in another city. The first city, Paris, is unlocked at the start of the game.

Since winning battles comes down to having recipes that suit themes, you’ll want to gather as many as you can, using a variety of different ingredients. Ingredients can be bought in towns and unlocked cities. Once you have a few, take them to the test kitchen and combine 3-5 different ingredients in hopes of landing on a new recipe. As you add ingredients to the pot, you will see a percentage posted on the pot that indicates what percentage of the ingredients for a particular recipe are found in the pot. The higher the percentage, the greater chance you have of successfully discovering a new recipe.

But having the right ingredients isn’t the only factor in the success of your recipes. Each chef also has the ability to train in several key areas: Skill, Creativity, and Tenacity. Training skills costs money but each one comes with benefits. Training skill increases the power of your recipes during competitions, creativity increases the chance of successfully discovering new recipes. Meanwhile, training Tenacity increases your chef’s chance at acquiring rarer ingredients at local markets.

Every player begins the game with Sylvie as their main chef, but along the way, you’ll have the opportunity to participate in recruitment battles to earn an extra chef for your team. Each comes with specific specialties and can learn a set number of recipes, so the more of them you can add to your team, the better.

As you explore the map, participating in various local and boss battles, you uncover another small piece to the mystery of your father’s death. Meanwhile, with each new town you visit, you learn a bit about the geography of the area as the foods sold in the markets mirror the kinds of things you’d find in those regions in the real world. Another fun feature of the game is that, with each new recipe you discover, the game also gives you the recipe so you can prepare it in real life.

After spending a couple of hours with the game, I was impressed with its depth. I’ve only managed to make it through about 10 of the towns and cities in France, but the game boasts an impressive 500 locations. In addition, there are 200 ingredients to collect, 900 recipes to unlock, and 30 chefs to recruit.

Though there is an option to purchase certain items like chef skins or gems, you can easily continue to make progress in the game without having to invest a cent. If you are a fan of casual adventure games, love to cook or just enjoy learning about different areas of the world, Chef Wars is well worth checking out. You can download it now for free on the Apple App or Google Play Stores.