Looking for the best cooking games on Switch? Whether you want a realistic cooking simulator or just a great cooking mechanic – we’ve got you covered.
There are a wide variety of cooking games available to play on the Nintendo Switch. Many RPGs like Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3 have interesting cooking systems, but it’s not really the focus of the game. Let’s explore some chef games on Switch that put cooking front and center.
10. Minecraft
Part of maintaining a successful base in Minecraft is having a steady flow of food at your disposal. Your first few nights eating pork chops and steaks is fine, but there are many more complex food dishes can you can make in Minecraft to better sate your hunger. Minecraft food offers five nourishment levels from poor, low, normal, good, and supernatural.
Ingredients can be gathered from a variety of biomes for cooking. You can also set up local farms for animals, once you tame them and lead them back to your base. Minecraft is the ultimate sandbox, so while it isn’t about cooking – cooking is essential to survival. Setting up your food supply chain can be one of the more enjoyable parts of base-building in the game. Minecraft is one of the best cooking games on Switch for kids to enjoy, too.
9. Little Dragon’s Cafe
Ever wanted to manage a tavern and raise a dragon? Little Dragon’s Cafe lets you do both, with over 100 dishes to create for your patrons. Key story elements are gated behind acquiring recipes, so exploring the world and finding them is an important part of progression. As you craft new recipes, you’ll unlock more areas of the island to explore.
Managing your cafe remains an important part of the gameplay loop, however. If you don’t return to help with lunch rush, customers will become disgruntled for having to wait so long and not return. You’re also raising a baby dragon, so don’t forget to feed him. Feeding him certain foods will change his color. You can have a red, green, blue, or purple dragon.
8. Pokemon Cafe Mix
Pokemon Cafe Mix is a free-to-start game on Switch that features puzzling gameplay in a cafe setting. You’ll be serving Pokemon customers their favorite dishes, hiring new Pokemon staff, and managing the lunch rush. The gameplay itself is a match-style puzzler. It takes a lot of time to find recipes and befriend Pokemon, especially if you fail recipes in this game.
7. Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin
Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin is primarily a game about growing rice in the traditional Japanese way. But cooking meals for your human family plays a huge part of supporting your endeavors. Players assume control of the goddess Sakuna, banished to the Isle of Demons for allowing humans into the divine kingdom.
To win favor and return, you’ll have to grow a harvest worthy of your goddess mother. That will require weeding, hoeing, drying, threshing, and plenty of back-breaking labor. The combat in the game is about gathering ingredients for cooking and supporting your rice farm. It’s side-scrolling and combo-based and the better your rice harvest, the more powerful Sakuna becomes.
The core gameplay loop of improving your rice harvests feels satisfying when you provide a meal for your little island family. It highlights the importance of every part of the food supply chain, from field to plate.
6. Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town
Fans of Stardew Valley who want to disappear into a new farm universe will find a lot to love about Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town. The long-running game series is from the original developers of the Harvest Moon series, with plenty of inspiration from Stardew Valley baked in. Cooking is just one of 12 skills you can level up to earn recipes in the game.
Players don’t get access to the kitchen until they upgrade from their starter tent to a Log Cabin. From there, you can cook in front of the stove each night and store ingredients in your fridge. After each house expansion, additional fridge space is added for storing cooking ingredients. At cooking level 5, you can learn new recipes by eating at the Cafe and Capeside Bistro. There are over 100 food recipes to craft in the game.
5. Battle Chef Brigade
Have you ever dreamed of competing in an Iron Chef competition? Battle Chef Brigade lets you do just that – hone your chef skills in an arena where you must battle your ingredients. Each competition has a special themed ingredient and chefs must gather their own ingredients. The game is equal parts visual novel, match-three, and just downright fun for anyone who enjoys Iron Chef competitions.
You can get pretty creative on your themes as matching up different elements builds the dish. It’s deceptively simple, but becomes increasingly harder as the competition heats up and judges demand to see more complicated notes in the dishes. You’re limited on cooking space, so tossing ingredients in at the right time becomes crucial.
4. Overcooked: All You Can Eat!
Overcooked All You Can Eat! is a complete remaster of the first two games and all of their additional content. The game looks better and for the first time, supports online multiplayer for hectic kitchen battles. Each kitchen is designed to be used by four chefs, but two chefs can work competently together.
Overcooked perfectly captures how hectic the commercial kitchen environment can be when you have to cook the food and take care of clean-up for customers. Some of the levels introduce moving platforms, rats that steal food, narrow hall ways and even massive boulders to dodge while chefing.
3. Cooking Mama: Cookstar
If you’re a fan of the original Cooking Mama games on the Wii and Nintendo 3DS, then Cooking Mama: Cookstar is more of that. It’s not as in-depth as some of the other games on the list, but it does allow you to cook a wide variety of dishes with clever little puzzles.
2. Cook, Serve, Delicious 3
Take to the roads of war-torn America in 2042 slinging up food favorites from your food truck. Cook, Serve, Delicious 3! is like Cooking Mama grew up into a game that is weirdly addicting to play. There are over 380 cooking levels to master in CSD 3, with a co-op mode for multiplayer hijinks.
1. Cooking Simulator
Cooking Simulator re-creates the feel of working in a commercial kitchen with accurate physics. It can be played in one of two ways; as an accurate cooking simulator, or knife throwing chef maniac a la Goat Simulator. There are 60 real dishes that can be crafted in the game by following real cooking processes. Will you craft them all?
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