Restaurats

My instinct when I first loaded Restaurats was to slot it next to Overcooked and call it a day, but that undersells what toR Studio is actually doing here. This is a medieval fantasy tavern sim where you play as a rat chef, and the game commits to that absurdity with real conviction. Career mode asks you to build reputation over time, unlocking new recipes, upgrades, and increasingly demanding customer types, while Friendslop mode strips the patience back and throws you and up to three friends into a faster, messier gauntlet with a 21-day debt-avoidance timer ticking above your heads. The two modes genuinely feel like different games, which is a smarter structural choice than most titles in this genre bother to make. The cooking loop itself is intentionally stripped-down. You throw ingredients onto a packaging table, pack them, then either fire them in the oven or take the dish straight to the table depending on the recipe. You can even order pre-chopped ingredients to cut prep time entirely, which in the heat of a busy shift is less a cheat and more a genuine resource decision. It is lean, and a few reviewers have noted that depth-hungry players will find the mechanics shallow compared to genre veterans. That critique is fair. Where the game earns its keep is in everything layered around the cooking: imps invade and disrupt your service, VIP customers with race-specific preferences and moods show up and demand special handling, and the baguette - yes, a baguette used as a melee weapon - doubles as both crowd control against unruly goblins and a tool for very informal co-op conflict resolution between you and your friends. The roguelike progression layer sits on top of all this, randomizing upgrades and recipe unlocks at the end of each run so no two sessions feel identical. From a systems perspective, there are genuine rough edges. The XP distribution across roles is unbalanced, meaning a rat staffed at the reception desk progresses far slower than one working the kitchen. Progression can stall, and the randomized upgrade pool occasionally delivers irrelevant cards at frustrating moments. The tutorial throws several mechanics at you at once rather than pacing them out, which is a missed opportunity given how welcoming the visual style is to newcomers. Solo play, while technically supported, is a noticeably diminished experience: without co-op partners the chaos that makes Restaurats funny simply does not materialize at the same intensity, and the repetitive serving loop becomes more visible. For a strategy-minded player expecting layered decision trees, Restaurats is not that game. There is no deep kitchen-layout optimization, no staff trait management, no economy to tune. What it does offer is rapid legibility, short-session co-op appeal, and a genuinely funny fantasy setting where customer races have mechanical personality rather than just visual variety. Vampires are antisocial and will affect table dynamics accordingly. Orcs have specific VIP demands that can wreck your dining room if mishandled. The roguelike recipe-card system gives each run a slightly different flavor. Console versions are also in active development according to the developers, suggesting toR Studio is treating this as a live product rather than a finished box. If you have two to four people who want a session game that produces funny stories rather than demanding strategic mastery, Restaurats earns its place in the rotation. Solo players or anyone hunting deep simulation mechanics should calibrate expectations carefully before committing.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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