As a side dish or the main course, cooking can is a joy in video games.
Trinket Studios
In real life, cooking can be a meditative artform or a stress-inducing nightmare. When you want to enjoy cooking without the stress, plenty of games capture both the frantic and peaceful sides, with no chance you’ll set off your fire alarm.
I don’t know what kind of health code allows Pokémon behind the counter of a cafe, but the result is fun nonetheless. Pokémon Cafe ReMix is a simple but compelling puzzle game made better by its ultra-cute art style.
Cooking and crime may not sound like they go together, but that depends on what you’re serving up. Ravenous Devils is a fun but gruesome “horror cooking simulator” about running a pub that secretly serves meals made of unlucky former patrons.
You won’t spend most of your time in Harvestella cooking, but it’s still a big part of the game. Growing and catching your own ingredients makes cooking more satisfying in the end — and the gorgeously illustrated meals are a reward on their own.
Cooking is just one part of Spiritfarer, but it’s a very important part. Challenging you to figure out your spirit pals’ favorite foods and serve them on the way to the afterlife, Spiritfarer captures the best part of cooking — making meals with care for friends.
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! is as frantic of an experience as its over-punctuated title suggests. The fast pace of its food truck competitions turns cooking into a rhythmic button tapping exercise all about memorizing recipe steps and executing them as fast as humanly possible.
It’s more about serving food than cooking it, but inbento makes the list as one of the most underrated puzzle games on Switch. You play as a cat preparing bento boxes for your kitten through chill but satisfyingly complex puzzles.
Battle Chef Brigade is an intriguing mix of puzzles and platforming with a fun story about a fantasy cooking competition. Choosing cookware and ingredients carefully is the key to victory, making it a more strategic kind of cooking game.
No game captures the absolute chaos of working in a restaurant more than Overcooked 2. Its over-the-top levels include hot air balloons and other unlikely locales, and it’s a perfect couch co-op game.