Cooking with friends is great. But it can also be nice to cook for your friends yourself. Hmm, delicious meat!
You know me a little by now. When a visual novel or game smiles at me on Steam that has the tags “Cute” and “Pyschological Horror” at the same time, I prick up my ears. So it was only a matter of time before I had to watch Cooking Companions.
The beginning of the plot is easily explained. Our protagonist, who we embody, is in a cabin in the forest with 4 friends:
While the others spend their free time in nature looking for berries or mushrooms, I have to stay behind in the hut and prepare dinner.
Cooking Companions – Cooking with friends is just fun
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You will be supported by 5 cute foods with faces that are in far too good a mood. These “chompettes” present me with great vegan dishes and at the same time warn me that I am not allowed to use them myself. The bread keeps making stupid puns, while the onion tells me some wisdom about different vegetables.
In addition, we can examine one room every day. It’s worth searching objects multiple times. If you search the “dusty oven” several times, you will find little clues or a child’s cute drawing.
But as is often the case, not everything goes according to plan. Pretty soon it starts to rain. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stay just a small shower, but turns into a continuous rain that floods the region. Or to put it another way: My four friends and I are stuck in the hut. Food is dwindling. Soon all that’s left is a moldy slice of bread, which the five of us share.
Little by little, the initially cute façade begins to crumble.
Hunger is growing, but the torrential storm continues. Someone needs to seek help or food. In the end, the choice falls on Mariah.
But the conversations are strange. Even though we’re actually just talking about Mariah going outside looking for food, the goodbyes seem so final. Everyone is close to tears and when Mariah goes outside, I already suspect that she won’t be coming back. This is also “very slightly” indicated by the fact that the game says in the thickest capslock font: “MARIAH HAS LEFT THE CABIN.”
When my hunger got even bigger the next day, I decided to get a piece of meat from my secret reserve so that everyone had at least a little something in their stomachs.
The dialogues continue to be strange. Because when Karin confronts me about “explaining to her where the food comes from,” I explain it to her. Just as. Because the game simply says “You explain it” and leaves me uncertain about what is meant.
Well, let’s be honest. Anyone who has consumed at least a little horror in the last 20 years knows exactly what happened here: Mariah was killed and her flesh was used as a meal by the protagonist. This is now relatively obvious and yet only the beginning of this journey.
Cooking Companions is cute. And really creepy. Like this song:
As increasingly drastic decisions are made and good friends are dismembered and cooked, your character has increasingly worse nightmares that slowly merge with reality. There are voices that can be heard quietly throughout the hut. Small movements in the distance of the forest.
And then of course there are the Chompettes, the talking, happy foods that move through the mouse holes in the house walls and apparently have their own plans – and in the end maybe aren’t as cute an element as you originally thought.
The “nice” thing about Cooking Companions is that after about 90 minutes of the first run, you’re not really finished. The game claims that you can now start a “New Game+” – but it is so much more. The story is told from different perspectives, in different times and with significantly more horror. In the end there is nothing left of the cuteness.
Disturbing images, gruesome background stories and one or two well-chosen jump scares make the game a great experience that you should definitely experience in a dark room at night.
Anyone who already liked “Doki Doki Literature Club” will enjoy “Cooking Companions” in a similar (slightly perverted) way.
Everyone has to decide for themselves whether they think the price of just under €13 is appropriate. It was definitely worth the money for me – others might wait for the next Steam sale and then get the game at a discounted price.
One last tip: Never tab “out of the game” for too long – because the noises I hear after a while almost drove me crazy.