Someone should make a game about: Gourmet Makes Eurogamer.net If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Someone should make a game about: Gourmet Makes Please take a whisk. Feature by Malindy Hetfeld Contributor Published on 11 Mar 2020 9 comments Cooking games are...fine. Give a player a few ingredients, season with a few action verbs (shake, toss, stir, etc.) and add a final pinch of urgency in the form of time pressure, unruly physics or the potential for error, and you have the framework for most cooking games. As much as I like games like that, they're not what I consider the most exciting thing about cooking. What I love are the moments of bravely deviating from a recipe and venturing off into the wilderness of unknown tastes. That's the approach The Gourmet Makes series of videos on Bon Appetit's YouTube channel takes. In each episode, pastry chef Claire Saffitz attempts to make a different popular, processed snack such as Snickers or Hot Pockets. While the challenge is ostensibly to create a better version, the show is mostly about finding ways to successfully handmake the very ingredients food companies use machines to create - reintroducing the human element back into foods most of us only eat out of a package. I'm still looking for a game about cooking that embraces the joy of experimenting in the same way Gourmet Makes does. The trial and error process, the very thing that makes Gourmet Makes joyful for viewers and tolerable to Claire, judging by her loud sighing, makes me wonder how many attempts and possible solutions players would put up with before frustration sets in. Bartending games for example work with limited actions or ingredients in cases where you have to mix a drink from scratch so as to limit the potential for quitting in a huff. But in Gourmet Makes, the solution to cooking and baking challenges not only comes down to the perfect mix of ingredients, but also from methods Claire previously didn't consider, like, whisking versus kneading or, er, using a miniature rock tumbler to give jelly beans an even coat of wax instead of hand-painting it on. Watching Gourmet Makes is like watching someone play with a giant chemistry set, and I want that in a game, because it's the one space I can have the same resources as Claire without the waste. A game like this would have to find a way to emulate the wealth of experience Bon Appetit's test kitchen cooks have while still being accessible to beginners. If you take each piece of cooking knowledge/ingredient behaviour and view them as a puzzle piece, wouldn't that do the trick? You'd end up with something like 2017's Opus Magnum for cooking, a cycle of intricate pieces finally making a satisfying whole. Or you'd go the route of procedural generation: if there was a way to make the chemistry of cooking accessible enough to let people play around with it to surprising results, you could make a veritable shortbread sandbox. (I'm going to patent that name, just in case.) I want a playable version of all the small crumbs of knowledge you pick up naturally when you cook, from rescuing a sauce that isn't thick enough to determining the difference between a gooey and crumbly cookie. Games generally excel when you get to leave the rulebook behind and use the skills you've acquired in experimental ways, which is exactly what Gourmet Makes has done for cooking. Become a Eurogamer subscriber and get your first month for £1 Get your first month for £1 (normally £3.99) when you buy a Standard Eurogamer subscription. Enjoy ad-free browsing, merch discounts, our monthly letter from the editor, and show your support with a supporter-exclusive comment flair! Support us View supporter archive More Features Digital Foundry Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090: a new level in graphics performance The Digital Foundry video review - and how the new GPU champion delivers for 4K 120fps gaming. 12 Feature Evercore Heroes wants to wind people up the right way "There's less rage at them, because they didn't end your fun." Feature What games get wrong about horses And what they could do about it. 34 Feature Shout out to all the Overwatch supports - where would we be without you? Merci. 55 Latest Articles Preview Football Manager's new Console edition is the best you'll get without a PC Getting Touch-right. Splatoon 3 Amiibos will be out next month Ink-coming! 3 Fans think Phil Spencer's shelf is teasing the Xbox Game Pass streaming box UPDATE: Xbox confirms old Keystone prototype. 59 Modder dives into Demon's Souls files following PS5 jailbreak, discovers fabled Ring of the Chieftain Who knows what's nexus? 4 Supporters Only Premium only Off Topic: Take a minute to appreciate Cookin' with Coolio's incredible scallops recipe. What a great book. Premium only Off Topic: Reading City of Glass in comic form "Where exactly am I going?" Premium only Off Topic: Il Buco is a transporting film about a really big hole Underlands. Off-Topic Netflix handled Sandman brilliantly It was Dreamy. 9 Buy things with globes on them And other lovely Eurogamer merch in our official store! Explore our store