Let Him Cook Early Access Impressions
Let Him Cook is a wave-based auto shooter bullet hell with roguelike elements and a culinary twist. Developed by HF Studios, a two-person team, the game is taking on its unique take on the ever-popular bullet hell roguelike genre that has been blowing up recently. The game just released on Steam Early Access, here are our thoughts.
Let Him Cook – A Culinary Auto Shooter
If you ever played one of the numerous bullet-hell auto shooters, then you won’t feel out of place. From Vampire Survivors to Brotato, Let Him Cook takes a lot of inspiration from the genre and proudly wears them on its sleeve, especially from the latter title.
Like Brotato, Let Him Cook utilizes a round/wave system, which works well to offer some respite during an intense and hectic onslaught of enemies. In between rounds is where the roguelike features kick in. Players can purchase upgrades and the store becomes available. Upgrades are permanent during your run, and they include increasing damage for certain weapon types, increasing XP, health leeching, and more. Best of all, you can reroll these upgrade choices if they aren’t to your liking.
Clean Up on Aisle 7 – Weapon Store and Hiring Assistants
The store is where you purchase new weapons and hire cooking assistants to help deal with enemies. Each additional cook has a specialization and is strong against certain enemy food types or a unique passive like mimicking your own chef’s build. Like your own character, assistant cooks can equip a maximum of two weapons and up to 4 assistants can be hired. Don’t worry, if the assistant isn’t holding their weight during rounds, they can be fired and easily replaced.
The assistant chef system is a crucial part of creating a build. Especially since you get a preview of the upcoming enemies in between rounds. This undoubtedly helps you plan what weapons/assistant cooks to prioritize.
UI Navigation Can Be Rough
At first, navigating the menus in between waves was rough. There are multiple things to stay on top of in between waves. Right below the store is where you hire additional chefs. I can’t express how annoying it was to purchase weapons and equip them for the additional chefs at first. That is because their inventory slots were right above their already tiny icons. Navigating them was a chore at first, but a few waves later I adjusted. However, it was a pain, nonetheless.
Add a Dash of Salt to the Mix
Let Him Cook does feature a dash button. This is extremely useful as it adds an evasive maneuver that isn’t as common in bullet hell auto-shooters. No doubt it will help get you out of a bind and is useful to survive the more challenging waves.
Balanced Weapons
There are 25 weapons available during the early access period. Most times you complete a run you’ll unlock new weapons that you can use in subsequent runes. Each weapon has certain strengths and weaknesses against certain enemies, and they are quite logical in a comedic way. For instance, a peeler is strong against vegetable enemies. While a grater deals extra damage to dairy-based enemies. These considerations only add to the hilarity that is Let Him Cook.
Of course, weapons are tiered, and higher rarity weapons naturally do more damage. Fortunately, I felt the weapon system was balanced and helped create some unique builds, especially towards the later stages during a run, as you want to prioritize your weapon strengths against certain enemy types. Each weapon had its place and there was no obvious META to exploit.
Let Him Cook Features Hilarious Character Design
Enemies are divided into different food categories, there are fruit, vegetable, grain, meat, and dairy enemies. Their designs are quite hilarious, there are American cheese enemies that wield flags and fight one another, American Revolution style, to spoon-wielding fruity cereal puffs that want to dish out the hurt. Bosses like the couch potato and TV are hilarious and take time to defeat. The game’s aesthetics are similar to early the flash games that were so common on the internet during the early 2000s.
Let Him Cook Garnishes and Sautee’s Right
Let Him Cook is a lot of fun. It’s addictive and there’s always that temptation to play one more run, which is a sign of any good bullet hell/auto-shooter game. The UI will need some tweaking and while the content is decent, it could use a little extra time in the oven.
Let Him Cook retails for $6.99 and is available now on Steam Early Access. A demo is also available now on its Steam page.
Note – A Steam key was provided for the purpose of this early access impressions preview.