Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
Updated for v0.95/1.0 in comments
While Cook, Serve, Delicious! was already one of my favourite games, small things about it left me wanting more. The food options were very limited, there was little variation between days, and progression boiled down to how many days you completed rather than your skill. Despite that, CSD! is so unique that it’s hard to find other games like it.
I was incredibly hyped for Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! prior to release, but was put off by the changes to the formula. Recipes couldn’t be carried out rapid-fire if you remembered the keys, you had to press a key to go to the next page of steps. The menus and level select were obtuse to the point where I had to click blindly to navigate. The preset menus of the restaurants were brilliant as scripted level sequences, but made it difficult to justify working in my own restaurant when that contract work felt like the ‘real game’. Unlocking new foods felt incredibly slow. Serving more customers faster than ever was problematised by the need to still hit specific keys to start and serve orders, and that speed made slip ups way more common. The continuation of chores didn’t mesh with the new rapidity. Customising the restaurant was cool but I was also inundated with cosmetic unlocks I didn’t feel like using because, again, I didn’t feel compelled to work in my own restaurant. I return to CSD frequently, but CSD2 felt like experiencing Icarus flying too close to the sun.
– Real player with 145.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Casual Management Games.
I’ve played the first two CSD games and I love the first one. The second was okay, but lacking in terms of charm and progression. This game, however, blows both of them away, and it’s still in Early Access!
CSD 3 manages to keep the strengths of the first two games while avoiding their weaknesses. The first game was great because you were always working to become a top restaurant. Although you no longer have one in CSD3, your new goal is to travel through all the territories to Nashville and also upgrade your food truck to the ultimate cooking machine. Eventually there will be options to customize your truck but these are not in the game yet.
– Real player with 141.2 hrs in game
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!
CSD2 is enjoyable as a fast-paced cooking sim game, but it lacks the focus, charm and elegance of the original.
I’m left with the impression that too much focus was put into the restaurant customization and the breadth of food options available, at the expense of honing the experience and flow of the game.
The Good:
The gameplay core of fast-tapping gameplay is altered a bit with a new page system for ingredient management, and somewhat more emphasis on putting things together in stages. It also adds Holding Stations, a new element of play which has become a core focus of the sequel and offers a new dimension of time management which is mandatory for some foods, optional for others, and unavailable for the rest. Drinks become maintenance chores rather than serving orders, and drink+side+perfect gets you a bonus.
– Real player with 133.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Casual Management Games.
I was a huge fan of the original CSD game and I’m disappointed to say the second one just doesn’t live up to the first despite some good new features.
The Good:
- The game still fundamentally plays to the system of “everything’s chaotically messy and you’re trying to solve orders as fast as you can”, which is a fun game mechanic even if it can be stressful. Unfortunately a bit part of the “run your own restaurant simulator” is the progression, which isn’t great and I’ll be coming to later.
– Real player with 40.5 hrs in game
Typer Shark! Deluxe
Whether you know how to type or not, Typer Shark! Deluxe is a great purchase. It features a game mode AND a typing tutor mode, the former of which is a great defense/survival game that will keep you wanting more, while the latter is a straightforward typing instructor so you don’t have to know how to type beforehand. It is very engaging and addictive, put out by the same company as such games as Plants vs Zombies and Bejeweled. Despite the theme it is not scary or violent, and it works for all ages; you can also change your difficulty level, from Very Easy to Xtreme. The only downside is in Adventure Mode you only have 3 lives and once you lose all 3 you have to start from the beginning of Adventure Mode.
– Real player with 624.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Casual Education Games.
This game is a neat retro game. It isn’t great (hint, it would be great if an update were released) but it is fun for the kids. There should probably be an even more basic level for beginning typers when trying to descend into the shark infested waters.
Others have mentioned that when you quit the game on a windows machine it will still register as running. The only way to stop this is to look for the background program running labled popgame and end it manually.
However now we’ve encountered a new quirk. When opening the game that we purchased through Steam we are prompted with a message informing us that the free trial is almost over and would we like to purchase the game. I really hope we will not have to purchase the game twice to use it.
– Real player with 183.3 hrs in game
Keyboard Piano-ist
I enjoyed the experience of the game and I like the concept of how the use of the ‘shift’ key can change a note to a sharp or flat.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Nice program for my kid to learn alphabets to the songs he’s familiar with as well as mimicking playing the piano.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Phantom Typist
Introduction
Phantom typist is the typing arcade game which you can learn and improve typing skill of Chinese characters.
Type correct Chinese characters to clear the falling blocks before they fill up the screen, get the high score at the leaderboard with various play modes and levels!
How to Play
1. Chinese character blocks will fall down
2. You need to type the correct word to remove the corresponding block.
3. If these blocks fill up the screen, you will lose.
4. Type fast and correctly to achieve high score.
5. Also, apply game modes to experience different rules.
Features
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Self-defined difficulty and game modes
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Show the meaning and pronounce of characters
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Game records
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Steam leaderboard
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Steam acheivements
Story mode and other features will be updated during early access!
Type Knight
I decided a few months ago that I wanted to learn how to type without looking at the keyboard; I’ve tried this before, but it’s so easy to slip back into bad habits! I can happily say now, thanks to Type Knight and some other typing tools I can type without looking, and pretty quickly too! Type Knight is a super fun typing tool. I found that typing short words in the lower difficulties helped me learn to type those words quicker. By starting small, the daunting task of no-look typing felt a lot more manageable! Normal typing tools always bored me. I’ve found that by gamify-ing typing, I was working harder to beat my high score and then in turn improve my typing speed and accuracy more than I would have with just a basic ‘learn to type’ program.
– Real player with 12.9 hrs in game
Summary: Type Knight is a small but solid typing game with great atmosphere and the ability to import your own scripts for tonnes of replayability. It is a game that any fan of typing games should definitely check out. 8/10
A full detailed video review can be viewed here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjJCWKQF_KA
Plot:
The plot to Type Knight is extremely simple, but throughout the gameplay, there are intervals where light plot progression occurs through small text passages, there being 20 in total. While the plot is nothing complex or massively engaging it is always interesting to see such intervals where the plot does progress as you get insight into the mind of the knight and how his quest is affecting him the further, he progresses.
– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game
Typer Hero (打字英雄)
playing the game here: https://youtu.be/B9TbEh_PCuE
Full Disclaimer I’m refunding this game because of in game issues. Some of the words have a space before them and in that case no matter what I did I couldn’t type the word and couldn’t target anything else until the enemy ran into my wall. There was also a word on the first boss with a semi colon even though the whole phrase was red it acted like I didn’t type it. The words can also be offscreen a bit when the boss is launching rockets. The game is way too easy the only way you lose is if the game cheats you with above issues.
– Real player with 0.5 hrs in game
ANYEK - The Keyboard Puzzle
Very cool and cute concept for a game! Currently there are some minor spelling issues (for example in lv. 20 it says “gices” instead of “gives”, and some level in the beginning (which I can’t remember unfortunately) is missing a T in a word, but I’m sure the developer would take care of these minor issues and fix them.
Aside of this, the game is really cute and fun, makes you really think in some levels - I like it a lot. Not 100% done yet, but really enjoying it so far.
Would recommend.
– Real player with 0.4 hrs in game
Gude! Jump n Run
This simple 2D glowing cat game is exactly what I was looking for. Simple, no storyline, just shining cats illuminating the dark and finding butterflies.
The good- easy to play, simple mechanics, very enjoyable.
The bad- There aren’t that many levels in this game. You might get at max 6 hours out of the game, but you will smile the whole time.
– Real player with 0.9 hrs in game
Upon getting this game, I was confronted with an okay-ish platformer with a decent, if rough, control scheme.
Upon getting to the later levels of the game, I was confronted with ‘Com(m)ing soon’ for one of the levels. I assumed it was labeled such because I needed to collect the collectible butterflies (I was on 38/45 required at the time), but as it turns out, after collecting the butterflies? No, the level is still under construction.
This game has a single piece of music to its soundtrack, no sound effects, and frankly, is INCOMPLETE. While I could forgive the first two issues as being part of the game’s style and theme, the incompleteness means I can’t possibly recommend this. Nothing indicates that the game lacks all levels. There’s no warning on the store page, the game’s not in early access, so… what?
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
Keyboard Master
I think it need a harder mod for all of us who can write fast and without seeing the keyboard, but the free mode is fun tho
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
The start of a new game.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game