This cosy cooking game is all about chilling with your grandma and rustling up some incredible grub.
Nainai’s Recipe gives a surprising amount of freedom over the way you cook your food. There are no preset chopping directions, no steps that require a high level of technicality. If you fancy roughly chopping your garlic in half, that’s fine. Or you can go for a more precise, thinly sliced method. It doesn’t affect any overall performance, which makes the whole experience a little less stressful—until you realise your pork is burning in the pan, of course.
The game’s creators—Fan Fang and Mai Hou—describe the game as “a family story about how we lived together in a special way during 2020,” and that vibe really comes through in the chats you have with your grandma. All of your recipes and help come through text messages with her, and it’s rather cute having little back-and-forth conversations between chopping up scallions or throwing some tofu in the pan.
I don’t really enjoy cooking very much in real life (I’m also a terrible baker) but I do have a soft spot for cooking games, and Nainai’s Recipe really hits the spot for that much-needed cosy experience.
Grab Nainai’s Recipe for free over on itch.io.