Cook, Serve, Delicious! is coming to Xbox & PlayStation this Spring!
The tasty classic game makes its debut on Xbox One, Series S/X, PS4 and PS5 soon!
Hey y'all! I'm excited to announce that the Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X versions of Cook, Serve, Delicious! are coming February 28th, and the PS4 and PS5 versions will be following that later this Spring! (The Nintendo Switch version is available now!)
Originally I figured that Cook, Serve, Delicious: Re-Mustard! would essentially be the first game's debut onto consoles, but having that strange gap of the first game not being alongside CSD 2 and CSD 3 had a lot of people wondering if it was de-listed or what exactly happened to the first game. I was actually inspired by the Steamworld Dig devs releasing Steamworld Dig 2 on Switch, only to release the first game months later- I was a bit confused as to why they opted to do that, but the more I thought about it, the more it makes sense to be able to welcome new players with a more optimal starting point.
I thought I'd go over some of the small changes I was able to make with these new releases, specifically tied to Achievements.
Achievement/Trophy Changes
When I originally made Achievements for Steam it came at an era where I think a lot of devs were still trying to figure out what Achievements would actually be- should they be extremely difficult, so that players would feel that much more rewarded upon gaining them? Or should they be easier to get to fully maximize the 100% completion rate?
I fell more on the side of challenging, though once the PS3 introduced the concept of Platinum trophies my stance shifted a bit more- it was fun going for the Platinums, though that means just one single hard/impossible trophy could potentially run Platinum runs for players.
So with this release I kept most of the original Steam achievements for Xbox and PlayStation, changed some and removed others to make this a much more achievable 100%! Note that this is only for the console versions- the Steam Achievements will not be altered, as it wouldn't be fair to change them for players that have already earned them.
Removed/Altered Achievements for Consoles
The Love Chef (Date the entire pool of people from Cook4Luv) / ClicknStart Investor (successfully funded all ClicknStart projects) - I think the email based achievements can be a bit too easy to miss, and if you do, you basically have to wait for the game to loop back after "beating" the game. The Love Chef specifically has an issue where if your restaurant is too full your date may not be able to stop by at all.
Why wasn't this fixed for consoles? Well, to be honest, this one bug is tied completely into the delivery system and messing with the code now would have the potential to cause a cascading amount of bugs. I'm rewriting the entire game for Re-Mustard so that the order system won't run into these kinds of issues.
15k Customers Served - This one had one of the lowest clear rates for Steam, and you have to play a considerable amount more after completing the game. This felt like too much of a grind, so it was ultimately axed.
All Food Pins - I dialed this down from 1,500 to 1,000 for all pins for a faster clear rate.
The VIP Treatment (serve a VIP guest) / Quick Challenge (Complete the Quick Challenge in Battle Kitchen) - You're only allowed a certain number of points for both Xbox and PlayStation achievement lists, and I was running out of allotted space, so these two felt like the easiest to cut since they are extremely easy to achieve. Quick Challenge has been cut from the consoles as that mode was actually just the Weekly Challenge from Steam that was discontinued back in 2017 or so with a static challenge that hasn't changed.
When It's Ready (Read a peculiar email) - This is an interesting one, in that this meant to tease what our next big game was at the time of making CSD 1- it was going to be a city builder of sorts, but we ultimately made CSD 2 instead and used the city builder assets for CSD 3's backgrounds. The email is still intact for consoles, but I didn't want to call any attention to it since it's a very outdated teaser. But hey, who knows, maybe we'll revisit the concept someday...
PS4 and PS5 Versions Coming Soon!
We're aiming to release the PS4 and PS5 version of Cook, Serve, Delicious! in April (we're going through the cert process now!). Along with this we're also releasing (for the first time) PS5 versions of Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! and Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! so that our trilogy will remain forward compatible for the years to come. This will feature some neat PS5 extras like an Activity card that lets you jump right into the game. I'm really looking forward to designing games that utilize more of the PS5's feature set in the future. Sadly you won't be able to transfer PS4 saves to the new PS5 versions as the game is a completely new build, but we do plan on releasing to PS4/PS5 simultaneously for games going forward.
It's been fun revisiting my old code and getting it back into shape for consoles, and makes me that much more excited to design Cook, Serve, Delicious: Re-Mustard! Thanks everyone for all of the support over the years, and here's to many more cooking adventures to come!