PlateUp! Review

In my never-ending pursuit of co-op busywork games (and in particular, co-op cooking games), I totally overlooked that PlateUp! is a roguelike. “Overcooked but roguelike” is a dangerous combination. This genre of games is already rife with yelling at your friends and family. The added stress that one mistake can reset your entire progress makes it so much worse. Each “run” consists of 15 days, and if one customer leaves unhappy—be it that they waited outside too long or waited for their food too long—it’s game over for you. And unlike other roguelikes that reward failed attempts with things that might better help you the next time around, PlateUp! mostly just gives you alternate restaurant layouts and recipes to toy with. Recipes are severely uneven, though. Some recipes require so many steps that taking them into a run with you nearly guarantees you’ll fail.

Even if you take an easy recipe into the run, there are checkpoints in the 15 days where you have to choose to sell an additional dish or accept a negative effect like customers being able to come in after closing time. It’s actually a neat risk/reward system, though the randomness that is roguelikes means sometimes both choices are equally terrible. My wife and I got lucky one run with generous options and power-ups throughout. But after beating that run and not unlocking anything special, I immediately lost any desire to play again. It’s not like the restaurant mechanics are that great, anyway. Plate management is a huge pain in the butt, given that you can only hold one plate at a time, sinks can only hold one plate at a time, and even if you upgrade a sink to hold more, it cannot hold dirty and clean plates at the same time. Honestly, I’d rather just wash dishes in real life…

Reviewer

Clark
I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.

Published by

Clark

I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.