You’ve arrived for your first shift at a coffee shop, ready to make a few drinks, serve some customers, and hopefully earn enough money to keep your new employers happy. There’s just one problem. The last cook left an hour ago, nobody seems to have organized the kitchen, and you’re going to have to work out where everything is before the customers start arriving.
Welcome to Contract Cooks. Potato Peoples‘ co-op cooking roguelite enters Early Access today on Steam, putting you to work for a staffing agency that sends its cooks wherever they’re needed. One contract might have you making coffee during the morning rush, while another could put you in a diner at midnight or an airline galley where space is already at a premium.
You’ll take jobs lasting between three and seven days, prepare food, manage stock, and try to keep the customers happy long enough to collect your wages. If the job turns out to be a complete disaster, there’s always another contract waiting.
Nobody Said the Kitchen Would Be Ready
Every contract sends you into a different working environment, with its own layout, menu, and problems to deal with. Cooking involves preparing food through individual steps rather than pressing a button and waiting for a finished meal to appear. Making coffee means grinding the beans, pulling the shot, frothing the milk, and pouring the drink. Bread needs mixing, shaping, proving, and baking.
The steps are kept short, but you’ll still need to get them done in the right order while keeping an eye on everything else happening around you. You can play alone or bring a friend into online co-op, which gives you another pair of hands to help with the work. One player could handle the drinks while the other prepares food, or you can work together on the same order to get it out faster. You’ll also need to keep each other supplied with ingredients and equipment, especially when several customers are waiting.
No Two Shifts Are the Same
At the beginning of each day, you’ll choose a modifier that changes the conditions of your next shift. Some make life easier. Automatic stock subscriptions can take care of reordering ingredients, while loans let you buy better equipment at the cost of some of your earnings.
Others make the job harder. You could have to deal with a blackout, impatient customers, or a new dish appearing on the menu that nobody has prepared before. Taking on tougher conditions increases your potential pay-out, so there’s a reason to make the shift more difficult even when you’re already struggling to keep up.
You can also choose how much pressure you want from the contract itself. Casual contracts offer more forgiving cooking, without timers breathing down your neck. Heroic contracts bring customer patience timers, tougher consequences, and better rewards if you manage to get through them.
There’s also the kitchen to think about between shifts. Ingredients need ordering, deliveries need collecting, and everything has to go somewhere once it arrives. You can organize stock neatly on shelves, rearrange equipment, upgrade workstations, or install an open fridge to save yourself from constantly opening the door.
Whether that extra electricity bill is worth it is another decision for the business.
A Better CV Means Better Jobs
Completing contracts earns money that contributes towards your career progression, unlocking new dishes, cuisines, locations, and special jobs. Those unlocks carry over between contracts, even though the kitchens themselves don’t. Each new assignment means getting used to another workplace, working out the menu, and deciding how much trouble you’re willing to take on for a bigger payday.
The Early Access version starts with a focus on coffee, toasties, and salads, with the full cooking and contract loop playable alone or with a friend. Potato Peoples expects Early Access to last around 12 to 18 months, with more kitchens, dishes, contract types, station upgrades, and team perks planned as development continues.
There’s also a free demo available on Steam for anyone who wants to try working for the agency before taking on the full game.