Hungry for a delicious adventure!? Well then, the island of Khaya offers an excursion unlike any other.
If you are a fan of cooking-style games then this is the game for you!
You begin by finding a recipe book called the ‘Makanomicon’, which translates to ‘Book of Food’. Now, I don’t know about you but I happen to be a HUGE fan of ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’, a series based around this evil piece of literature called the ‘Necronomicon’ which translates to ‘The Book of the Dead’. Could it be that the creators of SEDAP! are also fans of the series?
With the book in hand, you must travel to different parts of the island with Som (the cook) and Gon (the hunter) as you learn to create all kinds of mouth-watering dishes inspired by actual Southeastern Asian dishes. Of course, I would not expect anything less because it’s in the name itself as SEDAP! translates to DELICIOUS.
Now, typically you would expect this game to be fairly simple, gathering ingredients and properly creating the dishes to serve to the customers, but SEDAP! is so much more than that!
Players will need to hunt chickens and harvest ingredients like mangos and pineapples, facing off against monsters like the pineapple turtle and the monstrous pepper bush. Some of these monsters will run away and require chasing, while others chase YOU!
The game is really all about blending cooking and combat, and players must properly manage their time between preparing dishes, gathering ingredients and fighting these monsters.
The game has a very charming art style with adorable characters and delightful music to match! The color schemes on the maps contain very warm colors evoking feelings of calmness, tranquility and relaxation. It definitely plays off the overall vibe that the game gives off. Don’t get me wrong, it definitely has its hectic moments, but it is absolutely a game that you can expect to sit back, relax and enjoy without feeling overstimulated. At the end of every world you can expect to encounter a boss level which involves creating dishes in a timely manner. The boss levels are not the simplest, but not overly difficult either.
But I did have a few concerns with the overall gameplay.
The local multiplayer isn’t exactly the most comfortable to play. What I mean is that locally there is a split screen, which of course is necessary and usually isn’t a deal breaker for me, but the way the screen splits feels incredibly awkward to me.
When both characters are close enough to one another, the screen is not split, but when the characters begin to stray away from one another the screen splits directionally depending where the other person is and it continuously moves with the characters making the split go from horizontal to diagonal which makes for a bit of uncomfortable gameplay. Personally, it made me a bit dizzy on occasion.
INDIECRITICAL EDIT
It seems that we missed the option to have a static splitscreen. After a word with the writer we decided to bump the score to 8, as this was one of her biggest issues, and the game was already close to our description of what a score of 8 means.
For more details click here: How we score
As for the solo play, it definitely has room for improvement, and I honestly felt a bit like it was an afterthought. It doesn’t seem like the developers fully considered that doing the tasks solo would be way more difficult when held to the same standards as the multiplayer option. It feels like all of the cooking times remain the same as if there were two players. It’s not the case, and the amount of recipes is lower, but doing double the work is still really hard.
Overall, ‘SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure’ is a very whimsical and enjoyable game, especially when playing with others, it’s really got that chaotic feel and I loved it. There are things that need to be ironed out but it doesn’t ruin the experience.
One additional perk is that I learned about A LOT of new recipes that sound so delicious I got to try them now. I personally intend to recreate some of these dishes myself in real life, especially the Mango Sticky Rice and the Thom Khem!
Positives
💚 Even more tense than most other cooking games with two different gameplays.
💚 Actual Southeast Asian Inspired Dishes.
💚 Charming art & design.
💚 Monster combat is simple but all the enemies have their own fun behaviors.
💚 Cute/Comical Dialogues keep you entertained in-between missions.
Negatives
❌ Awkward local coop split screen feature for some.
❌ Difficult to complete tasks solo.
❌ It’s fun in coop but it gets repetitive fast in solo.
❌ Two different gameplays is cool, but optimization means one player will most likely always be cooking while the other player will always be fighting, especially because each character is good at one or the other.
36yr old mom of 3! I am what you call a SUPERMOM, as I manage to maintain a 4.0GPA in my online schooling towards my associate’s degree in science for medical billing and coding, while absolutely crushing it at this mom thing! I am also a twitch streamer and content creator, and I also run my own discord community for fellow gamers and streamers alike! I love cats, baking, art and singing!
1 Comment
SuTheKitty
I can’t wait to try this out! The game and the recipes XD Great Review 🙂