Code provided thanks to Novice Flow.
Sous Raccoon – A Raccoon Walks Into a Kitchen…
I’m always interested when a developer takes the basic idea behind Overcooked and decides to have a little play around with it. That game has become something of a benchmark for chaotic co-op cooking, and plenty of developers have understandably tried to cook up their own versions of the formula.
Sous Raccoon is one of the latest to have a go, but rather than simply copying the recipe, it adds a little roguelite seasoning to the mix. The result is a game about cooking, angry chefs, increasingly impatient customers, marauding monsters and, naturally, a raccoon who probably has absolutely no business being anywhere near a professional kitchen.
The game is currently in Early Access, and I went into it wondering whether it would manage to make the cooking chaos work as a single-player experience. The good news is that I came away with some genuinely positive first impressions. It isn’t perfect yet, and there are certainly areas where I think the game could be improved, but there is a surprisingly enjoyable little game hiding underneath all the shouting.
So What Exactly Are You Doing?
You play as a raccoon who has somehow been employed as the sous chef by a rather aggressive chef. I’m not entirely sure what qualifications our furry little protagonist presented during the interview, but apparently “being a raccoon” was enough to secure the position. Your job is to help keep the restaurant running. Customers arrive, you take their orders and then pass the information to the chef. From there, you need to gather the ingredients he requires, deliver them to him and eventually take the finished meals back out to the waiting customers. Simple, right? Well, this is a roguelite cooking game, so naturally the restaurant has decided that simply preparing food isn’t difficult enough. Enemies start appearing. Customers have health bars. Things start attacking people. You can lose customers. The chef becomes increasingly furious. And before long, you’re running around the restaurant like a raccoon who has just discovered that someone has replaced the kitchen floor with ice.
Cooking is Only Half the Problem
The basic gameplay loop is actually quite easy to understand. A customer places an order, you collect the required ingredients, give them to the chef and then deliver the completed dish. The trick is managing everything happening around that basic process. Enemies will appear throughout the levels and attempt to cause trouble. Some will attack your customers, while others simply get in your way. Thankfully, our raccoon isn’t completely helpless and can defend itself with a rolling pin. Yes, there is something inherently funny about watching a tiny raccoon running around a restaurant beating monsters with a rolling pin.
There are also little seagulls carrying treasure that you can hunt down for additional coins. Those coins can then be spent on upgrades, adding another layer to the gameplay. Customers aren’t simply sitting there waiting patiently, either. Their health gradually drains while they’re waiting, and enemies can make that happen considerably faster. You can perform a little dance in front of them to cheer them up and restore some of their morale, which is probably one of the more ridiculous but great solutions to customer dissatisfaction I’ve encountered. If things go particularly badly and a customer expires, you even have to deal with the unfortunate consequences before the chef or the customers get upset. The game certainly isn’t taking itself seriously, so expect plenty of laughs as you attempt to deal with all the drama on screen.
Things Can Go Wrong Quickly
This is where Sous Raccoon starts becoming properly chaotic. Initially, I wasn’t completely convinced. Everything felt quite slow, and I was trying to keep track of far too many things at once. But once I started understanding the rhythm of a shift, I found myself enjoying it considerably more. There is a nice flow to it. Collect the ingredients. Help the chef. Deliver the food. Deal with the monsters. Keep the customers happy. Try not to make the chef angry. Continue.
And then something inevitably goes wrong. The problem is that when one thing goes wrong, it can sometimes feel as though the entire restaurant collapses with it. A customer leaves, something else goes wrong with an order, an enemy starts attacking somebody, and suddenly you’re three steps behind everything. You do have three strikes before the chef finally loses his patience, so there’s some room for mistakes, but I did find myself reaching game over rather quickly on some attempts. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for a roguelite, but I think the balance will be important as development continues.
The Roguelite Side
One thing I particularly like about Sous Raccoon is that it isn’t simply trying to be another cooking game. After surviving a shift, you enter the game’s progression system and can spend your hard-earned resources on upgrades. You can improve things such as your movement speed, your ability to heal customers with your dance, your rolling ability and other useful skills. There are also special abilities that can be purchased, including things like barriers and decoys that can help control the chaos. This gives you something to work towards beyond simply completing the next level. It’s also a nice way of giving you a feeling that you’re gradually becoming better equipped to deal with the increasingly ridiculous situations the game throws at you.
Early Access Niggles
This is still an Early Access game, so obviously I’m approaching it with that in mind. One of my bigger frustrations at the moment is the structure of the early game. You need to work through several shifts before progressing to the next area, and there currently isn’t a proper way to save your progress between those shifts. That can make committing to a session feel like quite a substantial undertaking. Sometimes I don’t want to sit down and promise that I’m going to spend the next chunk of my evening completing seven restaurant shifts. Sometimes I just want to play one or two levels and go and do something else. A save system between shifts would therefore be very welcome.
The good news is that the developers are already working on expanding the game. Co-op was recently added, marking a huge milestone in its development.
Chefs Kiss
Visually, I really like what the developers are doing. Sous Raccoon has a soft, colourful presentation that gives it a similar playful energy to the games that inspired it without feeling like it’s simply trying to copy them. The aquatic theme works particularly well, with fishy customers, colourful environments and increasingly silly enemies wandering around the restaurant. You’ve got everything from rolling lobsters to onion creatures jumping out of the ground, along with some rather huge whale bosses that provide something a little more challenging. It all has a nice cartoon-like personality, which suits the ridiculous premise perfectly.
Co-op
The addition of co-op feels like a particularly important development for Sous Raccoon. I played the game primarily on my own, and I actually enjoyed it more than I expected to. I appreciate that the developers are attempting to make a game that works for both single-player and multiplayer audiences. That’s a difficult balancing act. Games like this can naturally feel better when you’ve got another person alongside you shouting about missing ingredients while you desperately try to stop a customer from dying. That’s where the chaos becomes part of the fun rather than simply something you’re trying to manage. At the same time, I’m glad the developers haven’t simply abandoned the single-player experience. There’s definitely something enjoyable here if you’re playing alone.
Final Thoughts
My first impressions of Sous Raccoon are actually quite positive. The roguelite progression, upgrades, enemies and changing restaurant situations give it considerably more to work with than simply cooking meals against a clock. It’s also got personality, which goes a long way. I particularly like the fact that the developers have embraced the silliness. You’re a raccoon. You’re working for an angry chef. Fish are wandering into your restaurant. You’re hitting monsters with a rolling pin.
There are definitely some things I’d like to see improved during Early Access, particularly the progression and saving structure. For now, though, this is a promising little cooking roguelite with plenty of potential. It took me a little while to find the rhythm, but once I did, I found myself having quite a lot of fun. And if nothing else, Sous Raccoon has already taught me an important lesson: apparently the only thing standing between a perfectly functioning restaurant and complete disaster is one slightly overworked raccoon.
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