We were supposed to be fighting our way through GastroNomicon a little earlier this month. When we included it in our August Rogue Roundup, the third-person roguelite was set to launch on August 19th. That date came and went, but thankfully the wait hasn’t been too long.
Developed and published by solo developer TH3 NΔKOMΔ PROTOCOL, GastroNomicon has now officially launched into Steam Early Access, bringing together third-person shooting, factory building, tower defense, and hordes of food that would apparently rather fight back than end up on someone’s plate.
There’s quite a bit more to running this food factory than turning up for your shift.
First, You’ll Need Some Ingredients
Most of your time in GastroNomicon starts out in procedurally generated arenas, where you’ll fight through waves of enemies using an arsenal of weapons that can be upgraded as you progress.
Defeated enemies drop seeds that can be collected and brought back to your factory, while random power-ups give you more ways to strengthen your build during each run.
Cards can change things further by altering arena objectives and parts of the combat itself. That means one trip into the factory might not play out quite like the last, even before you’ve started finding different weapons and upgrades.
Of course, collecting all those seeds is only useful if you’ve got somewhere to put them.
Then It’s Back to the Factory
Once you’ve survived the fighting, GastroNomicon brings factory building into the usual roguelite loop. The resources you collect can be used to expand your operation, with light automation and tower defense systems giving you something else to work on between all the shooting. Your factory gradually grows as you make progress, so even when a run comes to an unfortunate end, there’s still something waiting for you back home.
Exactly what you’re producing probably isn’t going to earn the place any Michelin stars. This is, after all, a factory built around cursed food, and there’s an entire book dedicated to it.
Putting the GastroNomicon Together
Cursed pages are another thing you’ll find as you play, providing modifiers that can change how you approach future runs. Collect enough of them and you’ll gradually assemble the GastroNomicon itself, otherwise known as the book of dead factory food. There’s also a much bigger story hiding behind the factory, although some of that is being saved for later in Early Access.
It’s an unusual mix of systems. You’re shooting your way through arenas, collecting seeds, upgrading weapons, building a factory, setting up defenses, and hunting for cursed pages, all while trying to work out exactly what happened to this place.
The Factory Is Still Growing
GastroNomicon has launched into Early Access, so there’s still plenty more planned. Right now, there are three playable levels alongside the game’s core enemies and several working weapons. More environments are already in development, with additional weapons, bosses, and later-game systems expected to arrive as work continues.
TH3 NΔKOMΔ PROTOCOL also plans to use feedback from players to balance weapons and towers, improve environments, and polish everything ahead of the eventual 1.0 release. Cinematic story moments are planned too, revealing more about the darker story behind the factory as the game gets closer to completion.