Review: PlateUp!
| Author: | Brian Powell Jr |
| Date: | December 24, 2022 3:21:00 pm EST |
| Last Updated: | June 1, 2024 9:01:59 pm EDT |
| Read Time: | 3 min read |
| Tags: |
Game Details
| Genre | Developer | Publisher | Release Date | Reviewer's Sentiments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rougelite | It's Happening | Yogscast Games | 2022-08-04 | Recommended |
First Impressions
From It’s Happening and Yogscast Games comes PlateUp!, a game about running a restaurant during the dinner rush. I stumbled across this game during the recent Steam holiday sale looking for a co-op game to play with friends. On the surface the game appeared simple in concept and could be worth a laugh or two watching teammates struggle. Once me and my girlfriend started playing it, though, we found that the struggle was real.
The main controls for the game are pretty simple: WASD (or arrow keys) for movement, O for actions, and P for grabbing. It’s good they kept the controls simple as you’re pretty much dashing around the whole time juggling multiple tasks. I spent my time playing as the chef so I had to balance my focus between cooking and plating the food, washing the dishes, taking out the trash, and cleaning the kitchen. My girlfriend spent her time doing the waiting and managing the front of the restaurant.
Gameplay
Your goal in PlateUp! is to survive as long as your can, but if you can beat day 15 you get to unlock franchising. Franchising is essentially new game+. As I mentioned earlier, teamwork and coordination are the keys to success in this video game. The difficulty is absurdly high in that the moment one guest or group of guests gets tired of waiting, for anything, it’s game over. The game also ramps up the difficulty over time as every 3 days, you and your team have to make a decision on a new business opportunity or style. These options range from more dishes, different clients, and theming. In most cases, I got stuck with cooking a more complex menu.
Between each day, you and your team get to make adjusts and upgrades to your restaurant. You earn a certain amount of coins based on the previous day’s performance and you can use that money to buy new equipment or furnishings. What options you have for new items varies from day to day, but you can store one schematic from the previous day in a file cabinet. If the item also happens to be labeled as “upgradable” you can also upgrade the item during the dinner rush using a research desk placed nearby. The upgrade path is not guaranteed to give you what you want and it also increases the cost of the item.
On a more recent attempt, we found a third person to share in the pain so we started up a burger joint. The number of parties you have to server per day appeared to be tied to number of players present as we had to serve 9 groups on just day 3. Needless to say, we failed and moved on to making steaks.
Filling a Bucket One Drop At a Time
Regardless of how many times you and your team may fail, PlateUp! follows a kind of “Roguelite” gameplay loop in that you earn experience for your efforts that unlock bigger and better things to use in future attempts. When your attempt is over, you are rewarded with a few new goodies. This can range from items, to new restaurant floorplans, to new main dishes. Once you progress far enough to unlock the garage/warehouse at your headquarters, you can choose up to 2 items to take with you on your next attempt. I found this to be very helpful on one go-around where I brought in a freezer. The freezer made it so I could store one food item from the previous day which was helpful when you have to make something time consuming like soup.
Final Thoughts
For all the frustration and stress PlateUp! caused me, I did enjoy playing it because the chaos lead to some funny moments where I had to find creative places to store things as I was getting backed up in the kitchen (we served a guest a well-done steak that I had plated up and sitting in the sink for about 3 minutes before they ordered it). I would recommend this game if you enjoy “roguelite” games and you have some friends who find it entertaining to struggle.