The Chef’s Shift

What a clever and hilarious little game XD
They are not joking about the typing and I love it. You get a "PLEASE USE THE KEYBOARD" anytime you try to use your clicker. In this game you have to type everything out to elicit an action, so there is no need for a mouse (and I mean quite literally, you even have to chase mice out of your restaurant haha).
You play as a criminal on the run with a knack for cooking his way out of mischief! There is a story with dialogue that will keep you chuckling, different restaurants to “manage”, an upgrade system and tiers of difficulty with level objectives. Honestly, I just love how it plays so differently than anything else I have ever encountered. Sometimes you have to use capitals, numbers, symbols etc. So creatively done!!
Cute art and music. Get this game for a fun, unique experience on your computer.
And yes sir, pineapple on pizza IS a sin ;)

1% cook serve delicious gameplay
99% yakuza + quentin tarantino + soap drama of your choice storytelling

this game is beyond goated

Came for the typing, stayed for the incredible telenovela-style plot. 11/10

This is such a fun game, from the various restaurants with different cuisines to the overarching story. I wasn't expecting something so engaging when I started, but enjoyed the mechanics of typing to queue up tasks for your chef to complete. I also love the gradual increase in difficulty through the restaurants and levels, and definitely feel like the levels themselves or the endless mode could be used to teach or reinforce skills of those less familiar with their typing skills.

As for ease I type quite quickly and only had significant challenges with the most difficult levels. But even with that challenge I didn't feel like they were insurmountable, and like it would continue to hone skills without being too too difficult for slower typers to complete. There's also easy, normal, hard, and very hard difficulties to scale your own playing experience, if you're not super confident in your keyboard skills!

Got this game because of the Steam Typing Fest and started playing it the same day. Could. Not. Stop. The gameplay is simple yet challenging, the story is rich and humorous. Had to pull myself away after the first chapter to leave this review it's that good. I look forward to finding out what happens next, Panitia GameDev did a great job it's literally *Chef's Kiss*.

Disclaimer: I played this game for 8.5 hrs, but since it was mostly offline, it didn't sync up :(
Anyway, within the 8.5 hrs that I played, I've finish the game on Very Hard and collected all the stars. So my review will reflect that. I'm sure that goes to show that I really love this game. A lot. I've enjoyed typing games like Epistory and Cook, Serve, Delicious; so this game is definitely up my alley.
I love that each level has its own ways of cooking; some harder than the other. I feel that Chinese resto was much harder compared to the other levels later on, so I had to repeat the levels quite a few times to win 3* AND the challenge. Since everything needed to be fried first, I'd often forget to pick them up and ended up burning them. Preparing the noodles are also tricky (but I love the challenge!)
However, it simply made the next restaurant level pale in comparison to the difficulty.
Speaking of difficulty, I feel like the only thing that differentiate difficulty is how long the words as, the higher the difficulty levels. However, most of the words gets repeated a lot. The amount of "government" that I typed in this game... There could've been more difficult / long words that are added, or perhaps, the randomization to the words are lacking.
As I reach Indo resto levels, the words felt so short, especially making es teler and the nasi lawar were ...basically, easy, even if I was playing Very Hard level.
The symbols, numbers and dinosaur names were difficult, but the english words (the language I played in) got repetitive after a while. Could add some more long words like: customization, exasperation, anniversary, gastronomy, impossibility, etc. It would make the handstand customers' words become much more challenging.
Speaking of randomization, when I played the Japanese resto, the game didn't ask me to make vegetable donburi. At all. Which is why I'm still missing that particular achievement. Plus, it feels like with newer menus introduced, the older menus get forgotten / overwritten by new ones. Some menus simply don't get ordered enough.
For example, in the Korean resto, I barely get asked to marinate the meat even though it is something that you upgrade. As a result, I didn't bother upgrading it as it is not needed.
I play with the tutorial off since I prefer to explore the game on my own pace without being told what to do by the tutorial. Although, there were some parts of the cooking that weren't included in tutorial that I was confused what to do; the first one being how to make the platter (in chinese resto), and how I needed to choose the clean grill (in Korean resto). I turned on the tutorial only during those times to see if I'll get an explanation as to how to prepare those 2 things. Alas, it did not show up.
The minigames to make the different menus are very fun. Tangyuan and takoyaki is the easiest, while Beer pouring was the hardest. They were all very memorable and they're all different enough so it feels fresh.
I kinda wish that they added more Indo words in the level since I did see "pemalas" and "miskin" when we first started the level. It might bother some non-english writer, but there were some chinese words in Chinese resto (which didn't show up as often as I'd like to). That could be a nice touch to have existing word from each country in the different levels that exists.
I love the different customers and how each restaurant slowly introduced new customers there. The game doesn't only rely on different cooking methods to make things feel new. I love that the silver man beggar causes people's hearts to go down if you ignore them; and the rat whisperers caused more rats to appear.
Is it just me, or the Indo resto has more self-deprecation / commentary than the other places? I do find it funny that there are more rats and beggars, while the previous restaurant were very respectful of the culture with a little less rats.
I feel like there are easter eggs in the customers' designs. The lady with the hair roller reminds me of the landlady from Kungfu Hustle. The VIP grandma is giving me Yubaba from Ghibli but I could be wrong. I'm sure there's more that I missed.
I love that it's very fast paced. The side quest definitely adds to the challenge and made it harder. I have to be on top of everything otherwise I can't keep up.
In terms of the story, tbh, I skipped most of it when I reached the Mexico restaurant. I can roughly understand and see the twist / reveal since I still took a look at the story in Seo's resto just to see who Mina is. While I did skip through, I can tell that there's a lot of heart, humanity and fun humor in it.
I also love that the story managed to connect all of the restaurant and side quests together. Nothing felt forced (that I saw). Sure, suspension of belief and all that, but nothing too drastic. I wish there was more to the ending where we see a time skip after the you-know-what.
Oh, I also love that everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, shoots the rat with a gun.
Couldn't hear the music much since I played this on the train, but I did see a lot of Kevin MacLeod. Good ol' free music guy.
I have yet to try the Endless round, will do it once I have more free time.
Tldr; Great variation of cooking/typing "styles", with fun customers. Lots of minigames. Randomization menus could be better in the late levels, but Very Hard difficulty could be harder with longer words.

I came to cook, I came to type... I wasn't ready for the great story line. Absolutely fantastic game (so far)!!