Game: Automachef
Genre: Resource Management game
System: Switch (also on Steam)
Developer/ Publisher: Hermes Interactive|Team17
Age Rating: EU 3+|USA E
Price: €13.99| £19.99| $14.99
Release Date: 23rd July 2019
Thanks to Team 17 for kindly supplying a review code!
A combination of fast-food and tough puzzles
After their success with the Overcooked series Team17 are back again with another cooking themed game. This time you won’t be doing the cooking though, a machine will do it for you. Automachef is a resource management game where you are tasked with building an automated kitchen for a restaurant, using conveyor belts, computers, food processors, robotic arms and grills and machinery.
Automachef is made by indie developer Hermes Interactive from Argentina. In the game, you work for a robotic Fast Food tycoon who believes he’s a human.
To get started, your robot-boss will guide you through two tutorial levels to learn how the running of the automated kitchen works. The tutorial explains the layout of an automatic kitchen and what machines are required to produce a hamburger. To make it slightly more difficult it moves on to producing a cheeseburger.
Building your first production line
That’s the tutorial done, and then on the next level you are on your own, with an empty room to fill up with machines. Doesn’t sound too hard does it? Trust me, it’s more difficult than you think. The most simple of recipes, like making a cheeseburger is a complex task. It’s not like in other cooking games where your character can make bread just by putting flour and water in the oven. Here, you have to think logically and really make the production line like you would in real life.
For instance, for cheeseburgers you need three dispensers, one for the bun, one for the cheese and another for the meat. Conveyor belts to move those items along, the bun just needs to move from the dispenser to the Assembler. The cheese however needs to be sliced, a cheese processor added to the cheese line will do that. Bun and cheese have to come together and be picked up by a robotic arm to put into the assember.
The meat once dispensed travels along the conveyor belt, but it needs to be cooked before you can put it on the bun. A simple robotic arm lifts it and places it on the grill to be cooked. It wouldn’t do if another simple robotic arm would simply lift it off again, it has to be programmed to wait until the meat is cooked. So a smart robotic arm will lift the cooked meat and place it back onto another conveyor belt.
Finally all ingredients will travel through an Assembler which as its name suggests puts all the ingredients together and back out on to the conveyor belt to reach the restaurant and a hungry customer.
Programming requires logical thinking
Doesn’t sound easy right? After playing the fairly short tutorial I was on the next level facing an empty room and being asked to make burgers and cheese burgers. Where the tutorial felt logical, being faced with an empty production kitchen was something else. I didn’t really know what to do, so I replayed the tutorial levels a second time.
I felt more confident to give it a go, getting to grips with the Order Reader: it is needed to be able to make more then one recipe on a line. For instance, people might ask for burgers or cheeseburgers. In the Order Reader, you program that different steps have to be taken for each order. After all, sometimes a cheese slice is needed for a cheeseburger, but a hamburger doesn’t need one.
Of course, these were only the simplest ones. Further levels require you to make more complicated dishes. There are 35 dishes in all to make. One other thing: you also have to meet the set goals for each level: how much power you use when your kitchen is making orders, money spent on the machines and ingredients and food waste. Space in the kitchen also plays a part in how you assemble your production line. As you work though the campaign mode you’re given various size kitchens to work in.
Campaign, Contracts and Test site Mode
The controls work smoothly during gameplay, even if there where times that I felt like my ability to think and solve puzzles wasn’t working, 😂. However, after completing a task and watching your kitchen produce a successful order, there is something satisfying about watching it run. Pondering the level, working out how to lay out your machines and then getting everything to work is great.
Thankfully once you think you have all your machines laid out and programmed to make an order, you can test run it to look for problems.
There are various modes to play in.
A lot can happen to your kitchen in the 45 stages of the Campaign mode. Disasters can occur in your kitchen, a fire can start, machines can break down or the power can go off unexpectedly. Your kitchen could be hit with an infestation of bugs or an outbreak of salmonella which wouldn’t be good for business at all.
Contracts Mode gives you various contracts to complete within the business world, with different objectives, like delivering a certain dish and using a limited amount of ingredients.
With the Test site mode, which is Automachefs equivalent of a sandbox mode, you have unlimited cash and all the machines available so you can build automated kitchens and take a blueprint of it.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for a relaxing simulation game this isn’t it. If you’re looking to spend an hour on one level and finally succeed through trial and error then this is your game. Based on exercising the grey cells you might succeed in creating a cooked cheeseburger, hotdog or a healthy family meal!
If you’re looking for a quick five to ten minute gameplay this isn’t the one. If you’re looking for a challenge in a hard as nails puzzle game with some computer programming then look no further: this is exactly what Automachef offers.
