Game: Beastro
Genre: Casual, RPG, Indie.
System: Steam (Windows) (also on Xbox)
Developer|Publisher: Timberline Studio | Kepler Ghost
Controller Support: Yes
Steam Deck: Playable
Price: US $19.99 | UK £15.99 | EU € 19,99
Release Date: June 11th, 2026
Review code provided with many thanks to Premier.
Beastro – A Delightfully Different Kind of Cozy
One of my favourite things in gaming is when a developer takes a handful of familiar ideas, throws them into a mixing bowl, gives them a good stir, and somehow ends up creating something that feels fresh. That’s how I felt about Beastro. A game which, as it happens, has a cooking element to it.
At first glance, it looks like another cosy farming and restaurant management game. You grow crops, look after animals, chat with townsfolk and cook meals. Lovely stuff. But then it adds a deck-building roguelite into the mix and somehow makes the whole thing work.
Now, I should say straight away that this is very much a cosy game. If you’re looking for a brutally difficult challenge or something that demands brute force and regular Game Overs, this probably isn’t it. Instead, Beastro focuses on creating a relaxing routine where progression feels steady, failures aren’t overly punishing, and the entire experience wraps itself around you like a warm blanket. I found it rather lovely.
Running a Restaurant Instead of Saving the World
The story begins with a mysterious flame spirit arriving in a peaceful village after some trouble in the wider world. Naturally, rather than immediately charging off to fight evil, our fox-like protagonist Panko decides there are more important matters at hand, such as running a restaurant. Frankly, I respect those priorities. The game takes place almost entirely within the cosy village of Palo Pori, and your days are split into three distinct phases that form the core gameplay loop.
The morning is your relaxing exploration phase. This is where you’ll wander around town, speak to residents, gather resources, tend crops, care for animals, fish, shop for ingredients, and generally enjoy village life. There’s no pressure here—no looming timer breathing down your neck. You can potter about at your own pace and simply enjoy being part of the community. It’s a very calming start to each day. If only real life was this upbeat, usually takes me several coffees just to get out of bed.
Cooking Up a Storm
Once you’re ready, it’s time to open the restaurant. This is where Beastro leans heavily into its cooking mechanics through a collection of minigames. Preparing meals involves chopping vegetables, frying ingredients, baking dishes and more, all through simple interactive challenges. I appreciated that the game reminds you of the controls whenever a minigame appears. There are quite a few different activities to remember, so having those little prompts available was genuinely helpful. Not every minigame landed perfectly for me. Some felt better than others, and there were a couple that never quite clicked in the same way. Fortunately, failure isn’t a disaster.
Messing up a cooking challenge simply means earning slightly less experience from the dish rather than ruining your progress completely. That’s something I really appreciated throughout the game. Beastro consistently feels forgiving. As you level up, you can unlock new dishes via a skill tree. There is always something new just around the corner.
Feeding Heroes and Building Decks
The most unique part of Beastro arrives when you start preparing meals for the Caretakers. These adventurers are the brave souls actually heading beyond the village walls to deal with the monsters threatening the world. Your role isn’t to join them directly. Instead, you support them through food. Which feels like the far more sensible job.
Each Caretaker has specific tastes, cravings and preferences. The meals you prepare influence what cards become available during the evening’s adventure phase. This system is clever, but I will admit it was also where I experienced the most confusion. The game explains things, but some of the mechanics surrounding meal composition and flavour balancing felt a little harder to grasp initially. I mostly learned through experimentation. Eventually, it began to click, but I do think a little more clarity during these tutorials would have helped smooth out the learning curve. Though even in the game’s cozy tone, it reminds you that you’ll pick it up with practice.
A Puppet Theatre Roguelite
Then comes my favourite surprise. Rather than directly controlling the adventurers during their journeys, their exploits are presented through an adorable puppet theatre. It’s such a creative presentation that I couldn’t help but smile every time it appeared.
The battles themselves become a turn-based deck-building experience where the meals you’ve prepared determine the cards available. You match flavours, counter enemy cards, boost values, and strategically play your hand to overcome increasingly difficult encounters. The game does a good job of helping players understand what options are available. Helpful indicators show which cards can be played, and actions aren’t immediately locked in until you’re ready to confirm them. Even when I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing, I rarely felt completely lost.
That said, boss encounters can be quite brutal. There were several moments where it felt like the boss simply had cards far stronger than anything available in my deck. Sometimes defeat felt less like a tactical mistake and more like an unfortunate mismatch. Thankfully, this circles back to the game’s forgiving nature. Even failed runs reward resources and progression, allowing you to return stronger next time. Though it sometimes felt like luck of the draw whether you had the right cards going into the next run.
Absolutely Charming Presentation
One area where Beastro excels is presentation. The village is bursting with personality. The characters are memorable, the environments are vibrant, and everything feels warm and welcoming. There is an overwhelming positivity to the entire experience. The townsfolk are pleasant, the atmosphere is comforting, and the world simply feels like a nice place to spend time. The puppet theatre sequences deserve special praise as well. They’re wonderfully imaginative and give the roguelite sections a distinct identity that helps Beastro stand apart from similar games. It’s creative, charming, and genuinely memorable, topped off with a relaxing score.
Controls in general are easy to use. Helpful button prompts are provided on screen for keyboard and controller users. Despite so many gameplay mechanics, everything is fairly easy to understand.
Conclusion: Dish of the Day
Beastro feels like a cosy player’s dream. It successfully combines farming, restaurant management, cooking minigames and deck-building roguelite mechanics into something that feels surprisingly cohesive. Not every element is explained perfectly, and some of the systems can initially feel a little confusing. The boss encounters occasionally felt harsher than I would have liked, too.
Yet despite those issues, I found myself consistently enjoying my time with it. What impressed me most is how welcoming the game feels. It never seems interested in punishing the player. Instead, it gently encourages you forward, allowing you to learn, experiment and progress at your own pace. If you’re someone who enjoys cosy games and have perhaps been intimidated by more demanding roguelites in the past, Beastro might be exactly the kind of gateway experience you’re looking for.
And if you simply want to spend your evenings growing vegetables, cooking meals, petting strange farm animals and helping save the world one dinner plate at a time, there’s plenty here to love.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up
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