If Iron Chef Was Made By Studio Ghibli, And Was A Video Game

Battle Chef Brigade is a video game stew that’s one part Iron Chef, one part brawler, and one part Hayao Miyazaki. My childhood, basically. It looks glorious, and now I am very hungry.

The game is on Kickstarter right now, but whatever—I’ll tell you about The Requisite Stuff in a moment. For now, just watch this:

I know. I know

Battle Chef Brigade is about both hunting and cooking. Hunting comes first, with each chef using a different combat style to take down a variety of oddball (and sometimes eyeball) creatures. Oh, and it’s not just some simple brawler either. The world has its own ecosystem that you can influence to gain different ingredients:

“The monsters are part of an ecosystem that you can influence and upset. You can feed the birds to get more eggs, but letting the other monsters snack on them might be very dangerous.”

Cooking, meanwhile, is pretty much popular TV show Iron Chef. It’s a timed tournament, and you’re out to impress a series of prickly judges with tongues that lust for only the finest eyeball-monster-eyelid-wrapped inflatable land squid. Creativity is important, but so is paying attention to each judge’s specific likes and dislikes.

Oh, and you can use magic. That’s kinda important I guess:

“The best meals are made with skill AND magic. Accelerate cooking times with an inferno, super-season a dish, and swap tastes and textures. Eat your own dishes to regain health and mana—just make sure they’re edible first!”

All the while you level up over time, get new items, and slowly but surely upgrade your heavy duty cooking arsenal.

I kinda adore everything about this—at least, conceptually. There’s no telling how all the pieces will fit together yet, and we’re gonna have to wait a little while to find out. Assuming Battle Chef Brigade succeeds on Kickstarter (it likely will; it’s two-thirds of the way there and still has almost a month left), it won’t be out until early 2016. I haven’t even thought about what I’m gonna have for lunch tomorrow, let alone what I will have for lunch after playing a video game that makes me really hungry in two years.

Oh well, though. A good video game, much like a good meal, takes time, effort, and a big wooden spoon for slapping away greedy fingers. Also it’s a well-known fact that a video game cannot be officially declared “in production” until a studio’s chairman bites into a plump pepper, and the resounding crunch rings through time, culture, and history.

And now I leave you with this:

There. Experience my hunger. Understand my suffering. Go spend waaaay too much money at a nice restaurant.

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