Gourmet

by Aaron A. Reed profile and Chad Barb

Humor
2003

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Reviews and Ratings

5 star:
(4)
4 star:
(27)
3 star:
(19)
2 star:
(2)
1 star:
(1)
Average Rating:
Number of Ratings: 53
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Restaurant hijinks, January 28, 2024
by Lance Cirone (Backwater, Vermont)

In this game, you run a 1940s theme restaurant, full of amusingly awful items, a band playing non-stop, and a toilet that's more high-tech than a good portion of your kitchen utensils. You are tasked with appeasing a food critic to save your restaurant. Everything that goes wrong can, in a really slapstick comedy way that lends itself to fun puzzles. The scope of the game is well-contained, mainly just focusing on finding things you need to serve your meal, and there's only a handful of rooms.

The quality and frequency of the jokes is the high point of the game. I tried a bunch of different actions and searches, even when I knew they wouldn't work, just to see the responses. Even the name of the restaurant ("Mack n' Geez") made me laugh when I first read it. I also like the added variety for messages that'll show up a lot, such as taking an item or running into a wrong exit. The descriptions of the rooms also change accordingly during the last part of the meal, to reflect the chef's mood. I think I ran into a bug near the end of the game, where (Spoiler - click to show)I couldn't reach for the lobster even though I ran the other two customers out and Mrs. Davenport was distracted, but I still enjoyed it. If you want something light and quick, check this out.

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- k42write, October 28, 2023

- gattociao, August 18, 2023

- elysee, April 29, 2023

- sw3dish, October 27, 2022

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

There's at least one in every comp: a game with great potential, clever writing, and fun portions that dissolves into a mind-numbing bugfest at its end, apparently the product of a rush to deadline and a lack of patience. In Comp03, Gourmet is the first game of that type I've played, and the letdown is as stinging as ever. If interactive fiction ever got reviews in People magazine, the write-up for this game would probably end with, "BOTTOM LINE: Good ingredients, but undercooked."

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- Edo, August 19, 2021

- Zape, June 23, 2020

- Zoe Victoria (Under your bed), April 24, 2020

- Stian, February 7, 2019

- Superfreq (Southern Gulf Islands, British Columbia, Canada), December 20, 2018

- Seth Fisher (Texas), August 14, 2018

- shornet (Bucharest), April 7, 2018

- Stas, March 28, 2018

- Shchekotiki, November 20, 2017

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Gourmet Night--Basil Fawlty should be so lucky, November 7, 2017
by turthalion (Winnipeg)
Related reviews: IF Comp 2003

This was another one I really got a kick out of, and thus, will have a shorter review than some of the others.

Gourmet is an enjoyable little evening in a gourmet restaurant that has you preparing dishes, dealing with customers, and generally having a great time. It's a game that, initially, I thought I wasn't going to enjoy. I thought I would find the tasks mundane, and too much like real work for my liking, but that turned out not to be the case.

There are a few oddities with some actions taking place behind the scenes, as it were, or fairly innocuous actions triggering a whole bunch of other things to happen. That wasn't too bad once I got used to scanning the text carefully to be sure I didn't miss everything that had happened.

Another oddity was the stack of first aid kits in the supply cupboard, which can't be referred to as 'kit' or 'kits' but only as 'bandages' or 'stack'. It led me to believe they were just scenery for quite some time.

And then the syntax for getting the sheet music out of the glass frame in the toilet was a little frustrating, as the game didn't recognise the word 'frame', so I couldn't 'smash frame'.

A few other line break oddities showed up as well, and the endgame looked like it was missing an rtrue to abort a default response, but otherwise, this was an enjoyable little game.

Author Encouragement:
I don't have a lot to say here. I think a little more beta-testing would be good, and would iron out a few of the formatting and synonym irregularities, but overall, a very enjoyable and well-written piece.

Scoring:
W: 4
The writing was great, with a good sense of how to impart the comedy of various situations without being heavy-handed. A nice treatment of the action scenes as well, which seem to fall flat in a lot of IF.

A: 4
I really loved going through the tasks required in this game, and really got the feeling I was running my own restaurant. I could feel the danger of having the whole evening crash down around my lovely chef hat.

B: 3.5
The score is a little lower here, just for a lack of extra synonyms and verbs, as well as the linebreak and formatting issues. I also had a little bit of an issue with the extended actions triggered as a result of some of my actions.

E: 4
I loved this one. Definitely one of the best I've seen so far. I think shadows on the mirror just, and only just, edges Gourmet out because of shadow's more polished feel.

WABE score: 7.75

Note: this review is based on older version of the game.
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- Wanderlust, August 3, 2017

- lkdc, February 10, 2017

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A fun mid-length game about a series of mishaps in the kitchen , February 3, 2016

Gourmet is a fairly well-known game that succeeds in slapstick comedy while having some pretty hard puzzles.

You are a chef having a disaster of a night as a well-known critic comes to your restaurant. You have to pass a linear sequence cell of challenges to have a good review.

The game felt uncomfortably complicated when I started, but then I realized that you should just follow directions at first and not stress about all the stuff. As you go, the game teaches you more about you restaurant and the system.

Then it dumps you into one very hard puzzle that includes a lot of talking and psychological work on both humans and a crustacean. This puzzle is very difficult.

I enjoyed the game. I could not finish, due to the game having a weird error with serving the final course, but I would put this game in the top 20% of all games.

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- Thrax, March 12, 2015

- Sobol (Russia), December 14, 2014

- Khalisar (Italy), October 5, 2014

- nosferatu, August 21, 2014

- E.K., January 9, 2014

- absentsock, April 27, 2013


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