Cooking as Gameplay: A History of Food Mechanics in Games (Various, 1985–2024)

What it is

A survey of how video games have treated cooking and food preparation as gameplay mechanics — not just as resource recovery systems, but as engaging, skill-based activities worth playing for their own sake. The evolution of cooking mechanics in games tracks the broader history of games moving from abstraction toward simulation, and from simulation toward something that might be called genuine cultural expression.

The early abstraction (1985–2000):

The first generation of games with cooking mechanics treated food preparation as pure abstraction. Burger Time (Data East, 1982) — one of the earliest food-themed games — cast the player as a chef assembling hamburgers on multi-level platforms while avoiding hot dog and egg enemies. The cooking here is not a mechanic but a theme: the game uses the visual vocabulary of food preparation without any simulation of actual cooking. You do not cook a burger in Burger Time. You assemble it by walking across it.

The cooking systems of early role-playing games were similarly abstract. In the Final Fantasy series (Square, from 1987), food items (Ether, Hi-Potion, Phoenix Down) were consumables with fixed effects, requiring no preparation. The "camp" systems of some RPGs allowed the party to "cook a meal" that provided buffs, but this typically involved selecting from a menu rather than engaging with cooking as a process.

The cooking simulation genre (1995–Present):

The cooking simulation genre — games in which cooking itself is the gameplay, rather than cooking serving gameplay — began as a niche and grew, by the 2020s, into a substantial commercial category.

Cooking Mama (Majesco, 2006) was the game that established the genre as commercially viable on home consoles. Using the Wii's motion controls, Cooking Mama had players perform cooking tasks — chopping, stirring, frying, kneading — through physical gestures that approximated the real actions. The game's recipes were real dishes from multiple cuisines; the cooking steps were simplified but recognizable. Cooking Mama sold millions of copies and spawned a franchise of sequels and spin-offs that continued through the 2020s.

The significance of Cooking Mama as a cultural object extends beyond its commercial success. It was, for many of its players — particularly young players in Western markets — the first time they had interacted with a real cooking process, even in simplified form. The game's recipes introduced players to dishes they had never encountered: Korean bibimbap, Japanese onigiri, Chinese mabo tofu, French quiche Lorraine. The cooking steps — even in their Wii-motion-controlled simplicity — communicated something true about the process: that cooking involves sequenced steps, that order matters, that technique can be learned.

Overcooked and the social cooking game:

Overcooked (Ghost Town Games, 2016) and its sequel Overcooked 2 (2018) are cooperative cooking games in which players must assemble dishes from ingredients, cook them correctly, and serve them to customers before time runs out — all while navigating wildly implausible kitchen environments (kitchens on moving trucks, kitchens split between two ships, kitchens invaded by rats). The games are designed for two to four players playing together in real-time, requiring communication, coordination, and division of labor.

Overcooked is specifically about cooking as collaborative work. The game's mechanics model the experience of a restaurant kitchen with surprising accuracy: one player handles prep (chopping vegetables, washing dishes), another handles cooking (monitoring pots and pans, managing timing), another handles service (plating and delivering completed dishes). The communication failures that lead to burned food, missed orders, and kitchen chaos in Overcooked are recognizable to anyone who has cooked with another person under time pressure.

The game was widely played during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way for isolated couples and families to share an activity, and its community noted an interesting effect: playing Overcooked together made real cooking together feel more natural. The game's model of kitchen labor division gave players a shared vocabulary for coordinating in real kitchens.

Genshin Impact and the gacha cooking system:

Genshin Impact (miHoYo, 2020) is an open-world action RPG with a cooking system that may be the most culturally diverse in any game. The game is set in a world of seven nations, each based on a real-world culture: Mondstadt (Germany/Austria), Liyue (China), Inazuma (Japan), Sumeru (South and Southeast Asia / Middle East), Fontaine (France), Natlan (Mesoamerica), and Snezhnaya (Russia). Each nation has its own cuisine, and the cooking system includes hundreds of recipes from all seven culinary traditions.

The specific dishes include: Mondstadt Grilled Fish (reflecting German freshwater fishing traditions), Lotus Seed and Bird Egg Soup (Chinese lotus root cooking), Tatami Roll (Japanese maki), Moon Pie (Liyue mooncake tradition — the Genshin universe's Mid-Autumn Festival analog), Satisfying Salad (French composition salad), Calla Lily Seafood Soup (reflecting the Persian/Iranian tradition of floral cooking). The culinary world-building in Genshin Impact is detailed enough that it constitutes genuine food education — players encounter dishes from cultures they may have no other exposure to, embedded in narrative context that gives them cultural meaning.

The game's cooking system also includes a "proficiency" mechanic: cooking the same dish repeatedly improves the player's proficiency with that recipe, eventually allowing them to produce the dish automatically. This mirrors the real process of recipe mastery — repetition builds skill, familiarity reduces effort — in a way that rewards engagement with the cooking system over time.

Dave the Diver and the restaurant management game:

Dave the Diver (MINTROCKET, 2023) is a hybrid fishing-exploration-restaurant management game in which the player dives in a mysterious underwater environment to catch fish, then uses those fish to run a sushi restaurant at night. The restaurant management mechanics are detailed: the player must hire and manage staff, develop the menu, set prices, manage reservations, and maintain quality. The fishing mechanics are equally detailed: different species must be caught using different techniques, sustainability matters (overfishing depletes specific species), and the relationship between what can be caught and what can be served creates a supply chain the player must manage.

The game's culinary content is remarkable for a video game: the sushi recipes are accurate, the fish species are real (with ecological annotations), and the storyline engages seriously with ocean conservation. Dave the Diver contains more accurate culinary and marine biology information than most food education products — delivered through a game that generated extraordinary critical acclaim and commercial success.

The role of food in world-building:

Beyond their mechanical functions, food systems in video games serve an increasingly important world-building role. The foods a game world contains — the spices traded in its markets, the dishes served in its taverns, the crops grown on its farms — communicate the culture, history, and values of the fictional world in ways that direct exposition cannot achieve.

The Elder Scrolls series (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim) has always used food as world-building detail. Skyrim's Nordic food culture — Black-Briar Mead, Venison Chili, Horker Stew, Elsweyr Fondue (a cheese dish named for the homeland of the Khajiit cat-people) — sketches a world in which mead halls, hunting culture, and trade with foreign spice merchants are central to daily life. Players who bother to read the game's food recipes and tavern menus receive a more detailed picture of Skyrim's culture than players who ignore them.

The Witcher 3 takes this further: the game's taverns serve regionally appropriate food (Novigrad's Hanseatic trading culture produces different food from Skellige's Norse-inspired island culture), vendors sell culturally specific ingredients, and the game's world has a documented history of trade relationships that explain why certain spices and foodstuffs appear in certain regions. The food world-building in The Witcher 3 is detailed enough that it has been analyzed in academic papers on game design and cultural representation.

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