Order up!: The Chef's Shift
A magnificent mix of restaurant management and typing games, with a side of drama!
‣ The Chef’s Shift
From: Panitia GameDev, Catoptric Games
Platforms: PC
Release: 31 March 2025
Genre: Kitchen management meets Typing
Steam Page • Demo Video • Developer Site
Lorenzo’s gotten himself into a big mess, only partly involving dirty dishes.
[This week’s article was produced by Christena Maurer—SFF author, engineer, coach, and mom. She spends most of her time battling in the manuscript revision trenches, fueled by tea, video game scores, and dog snuggles. Her story in Brave New Girls: Tales of Girls Who Invent and Imagine comes out July. Follow her on Substack.]
Restaurant management games have become an established genre in recent years. Fans of these games thrive on the challenge of fast-paced multi-tasking. There’s a shocking thrill that goes with the accomplishment of taking orders, prepping food, and serving quirky restaurant patrons while putting out fires in the kitchen (sometimes literally) and doing it all fast enough to earn a tip.
So how can a dev team up the ante on that sort of challenge? By nesting another fast-paced, precision-demanding genre inside of it. Get ready to type and serve in The Chef’s Shift.
If you can’t type fast enough, get out of the kitchen! The Chef’s Shift is the typing and restaurant management game you never knew you needed.
While the setup will be familiar to those who have played games in either genre (a. Type words as quickly as you can; b. Keep restaurant patrons happy), it perfectly meshes two very distinct genres into a unique and challenging game with lots of fun and character to go along with it.
Instead of clicking or tapping on coffee makers or pizza ingredients, players type the word hovering over the item they want to interact with. And if they want to get the order right and on time, they’d better be quick! It’s a twist on the genres that works perfectly to ramp up the adrenaline that accompanies trying to manage the orders of several guests at once.
But there is more going on here than plating. While most restaurant and typing games are lauded for the fun of fast-paced chaos, the storylines that go with them are often little more than pasted on theming to indicate stage progression.
Not so, here.
Here, we get drama. Intrigue. Romance!
The Chef’s Shift opens with Lorenzo, our hero-of-questionable-morals, who enters Guido’s Pizza to lose the police officers who are after him. As he steps up to the counter to order some lunch after a hard morning of pick-pocketing, the officers stop by the restaurant for some coffee, having lost track of their criminal. In a panic, Lorenzo takes the owner’s chef’s hat and spot at the cash register, makes a very unconvincing claim to be the new employee of the restaurant, and serves the officers their coffee.
Just like that, Lorenzo finds himself in charge of the restaurant, not realizing that in escaping the police, he’s gotten himself into a much bigger mess. Only partly involving dirty dishes.
Matching the drama and sheer character of the storyline, The Chef’s Shift does a really great job incorporating the art and sound design into the emotion of the story. The art is the type of simple animation most people expect in a restaurant management game.
However, the addition of manga-esque emotion-cues (officially called “manpu”, I’ve learned) and over-the-top sound effects adds a ton of charm and humor to cut-scenes and character interactions.
📽 Demo Snapshot: Things are still simple at the start
As someone who didn’t expect much from the story in this sort of game, I was quite pleasantly surprised to find several moments when a well timed sound effect or manpu had me laughing.
I expected to enjoy The Chef’s Shift when I started it, but I was shocked by how much I loved the overall product. The typing and kitchen management aspects I thought would be fun came together even better than I’d expected, and the storyline of the demo far exceeded what I’d been hoping for.
The demo ends with the dramatic conclusion of the story arc at Guido’s Pizza, and what I can call nothing other than a cliffhanger of a stage teasing at where the story continues. And (to quote our hero) Mamma Mia! I am excited to see where Lorenzo’s adventure takes him in the full version. The very last stage of the demo shows him working in a Asian cuisine restaurant, so who knows what lies in store for our hero, not to mention our typing prowess?
The Chef's Shift releases on 31 March 2025 on Steam.
Explore The Game with Youtube Chapters:
📽 01:03 Lorenzo needs to hide!
📽 02:38 First day at the restaurant
📽 05:37 Let's buy some stuff
📽 06:00 Sofia!
📽 07:10 Day 2
📽 09:04 What is Sofia hiding?
📽 10:14 Parcel delivery
📽 13:22 Tony's looking for a thief
📽 14:47 Let's start day 3
📽 18:20 Shots fired!
📽 19:05 Day 4 - Mafia stories
📽 25:23 Tony is upset on day 5
📽 32:35 On day 6, the ladies catch up
📽 39:20 Mimes, clowns... it must be day 7!
📽 44:47 Day 8 comes with a threat
📽 51:18 Mob wars!
📽 52:48 Is day 9 the last day?
📽 59:38 Standoff!
📽 01:02:35 Asian restaurant sneak peek
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