Battle Chef Brigade turns cooking into a bloodsport, and it works.
Trinket Studios built a game where you hunt monsters for ingredients, then race a clock to turn those ingredients into dishes good enough for a panel of judges. Adult Swim Games published it. It landed on Windows and Nintendo Switch in November 2017, then spread to Linux, Android, iOS, and Mac.
Trailer, via Adult Swim.
Mina, Thrash, and the Contest
Battle Chef Brigade takes place in the fantasy world of Victusia. The people there figured out how to hunt and cook the monsters that roam the land. That discovery built the Battle Chef Brigade: elite warrior-chefs who protect residents and turn monster remains into haute cuisine.
The game follows two amateur cooks, Mina and Thrash. Both want membership in the Brigade. Both enter a cooking contest against other hopefuls to earn it. That is the whole frame, and it is enough.
The premise comes with a creation story worth quoting. “If memory serves me right, it was starving northern protectors who discovered how to safely consume monster meat,” the game’s opening text reads. “Those elite hunters formed the Battle Chef Brigade, promising to protect the lands and feed the people.”
Two Games, One Clock
Each contest runs in two phases. First comes combat. Players gather ingredients from plants and hunt monsters across a small area, using physical or magical attacks. Defeated monsters drop body parts the player collects as ingredients.
Then comes the kitchen. Players drop gathered ingredients into cookware, where they become differently colored “flavor gems.” The gems land in a 4×4 cooking zone. Players rotate them like Puyo Puyo. Align gems of the same color and they combine, raising their rank and the quality of the dish.
Deliver the dish to the judges before time runs out.
Orcs, Elves, and Humans at the Stove
The cast is fantasy chefs: Orcs, Elves, and Humans, all cooking under the critical eye of judges in an intense tournament. The game pairs combo-based action hunting with puzzle-based cooking, and the round clock never stops.
Up to three judges score each contest, awarding points for quality and for meeting requirements. Each judge may prefer a certain flavor profile. Each contest also hands players a required ingredient and a time limit.
Where the Brigade Holds
Battle Chef Brigade avoids the usual trap of bolted-together genres. The two halves feed each other. What you hunt determines what you can cook, so the combat phase is not filler before the real game. It is the real game’s supply line. The puzzle phase then converts that supply into a score under pressure.
The side-view perspective keeps the action readable across PC, Switch, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. That is an unusually wide platform spread for a 2017 indie release.
What Holds It Back
What keeps Battle Chef Brigade from a higher score is scope. The contest structure is the game, start to finish, and Victusia stays mostly a backdrop. The Brigade’s promise to protect the lands never becomes a story you play. It stays a premise.
The execution is still sharp. The flavor gem system is legible, the hunting is quick, and the judges give every dish a reason to care about one more match.
How It Ranks
Ranked against the 2017 indie field it shipped into:
- Combat-to-kitchen loop: the strongest idea in the game, and the reason to play.
- Flavor gem matching: simple to read, hard to master under the clock.
- Platform spread: PC, Switch, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS all get the full game.
- Victusia as a setting: the weakest piece, and the one that never pays off.
Battle Chef Brigade earned an 8.1 out of 10 critic aggregate across seven outlets on IGDB. That number holds up. The tension is real because the ingredients are earned, and the two halves of this game belong to each other.
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