In the past few years, cooking games have been on the rise, with many of the available excellent titles becoming huge on YouTube and Twitch. But, because cooking games often go one way in gameplay or are mobile ports only meant to take your hard-earned money, it’s not a genre with dozens of games being made for PC.

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Luckily, though, the indie game scene has mainly been the one to push this trend of cooking games forward. And, because of that, there are plenty of hidden gems that are waiting to be played by fans of fast-paced co-op cooking environments, Stardew Valley-like cooking simulations, and even action-oriented cooking platformers.

Updated August 26, 2023, by Rebecca Timberlake: What makes a good cooking game is the balance of difficult tasks and silliness while completing them. If you aren't laughing in between frustration, then it just isn't making the grade as a virtual chef experience. Luckily, for fans of the genre, there is no shortage of quality cooking games, whether they are simulation or cartoony.

14 Food Truck Simulator

Food Truck Simulator Recipe Unlocked screen

Food Truck Simulator capitalizes on the growing culture of food trucks in big cities while giving you a touching motivation — you're restoring your father's food truck in the hopes of making it your very own business. Not only are you improving the overall appearance and functionality of the truck itself, but you're also creating and collecting recipes as you complete tasks to draw in new customers alongside the repeats.

Running your own food truck, you're expected to meet the high demand for food in a timely fashion for the customer on the go. This creates a lot of challenges for you but also gives you a great sense of accomplishment when you satisfy the customers.

13 Spongebob: Krusty Cook-Off

Spongebob Krusty Cookoff line of customers waiting for orders

Spongebob Squarepants has been a cultural phenomenon pretty much since he hit the scene in 1999, with some of the most iconic moments happening inside The Krusty Krab. With Spongebob: Krusty Cook-Off you can play and customize your favorite characters to live out your childhood dream of working for Mr. Krabs.

You can participate in timed events, and play through a typical day in the life of The Krusty Krab employees, all while keeping your customers happy (unlike Squidward). The game is free, which makes it the perfect game to take a chance on in your downtime.

12 Rags To Dishes

Rags to Dishes angry customer peers in your window

Rags to Dishes will check off a lot of unique boxes as a VR cooking game set in medieval times. While the setting and goal of the game may seem overly specific, the fun you'll have playing it is plentiful. The game is single-player only, making it a perfect game for when you're looking to unwind, or if you're home alone looking to cook up some excitement.

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Like other cooking games, you have a time limit for completing your dish for each customer, along with quality scale. Unlike other cooking games, the dishes you're preparing are meat pies and mushroom soups, and your customers are various villagers with a wide variety of tastes.

11 Recipe For Disaster

Recipe for Disaster ovens on fire with four chefs extinguishing them

Recipe for Disaster is more than just a cooking game. It puts you in the manager's position and tasks you with running the restaurant and employees, all while coming up with new recipes and building menus to maintain and grow your customer base.

If that doesn't seem challenging enough for you, you'll also face harsh food critics and the Health Department interfering with business and setting different demands on your staff. As you get more skilled and achieve more goals, you'll expand your restaurant and keep a steady stream of customers coming in for your fine cuisine and atmosphere.

10 One-Armed Cook

Best Cooking Games - One-Armed Cook

If, after playing Surgeon Simulator 2, you thought to yourself how great a cooking game would be with only one hand, then look no further because One-Armed Cook answers this question. In this intense co-op cooking simulator, your objective is to serve customers as fast as possible with, you guessed it, only one arm.

At first, it can be challenging to play due to the limited movement and little to no available instructions on how to play, but once you figure it out, you can serve burgers as you please. It’s available for up to four players, and customizable options are available.

9 Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator

Best Cooking Games - Potion Craft

Potion Craft may not be your typical cooking game, but it involves harvesting ingredients to brew potions for various customers that come to your shop. Each day in the game, you’ll be tasked with helping customers, using a limited amount of ingredients that are grown in your backyard, while working towards more efficient means of production.

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Potion Craft is not a simple game, and can take some time to master fully with its survival-like scarcity aspects. But, once you get the hang of it, the end game content can be very fulfilling, especially with new features being implemented regularly.

8 Battle Chef Brigade

battle chef brigade tile matching cooking gameplay

Battle Chef Brigade can only be described as a story-rich action RPG with a beautiful anime-like art style where you must kill monsters and then cook them to progress. It’s a unique game that you won’t find anywhere else in the cooking games genre, especially since it also features competitive gameplay.

However, the game has a few downsides, especially if you’re looking for a longer game. The game is very short overall, and the mechanics, in the beginning, can be a bit confusing to figure out. But once you do, it’s sure to keep your attention.

7 Cooking Simulator

Best Cooking Games - Cooking Simulator

Cooking Simulator is one of the more popular and realistic cooking games on PC. Its popularity is due to its semi-authentic cooking experience and chill atmosphere. And because of this, it was even cleared for a VR version of the game with more difficult-to-handle controls.

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There are over 80 recipes, and DLC is available for different ways of cooking and even more recipes like cake decorating and more. It’s plenty of fun and an excellent game to play alone after a long day, similar to how PowerWash Simulator operates.

6 Dungeon Munchies

Best Cooking Games - Dungeon Munchies

One of the best side-scrolling action RPGs is undoubtedly Dungeon Munchies. This game features a world of monsters to kill and cook with food and cooking-related humor spread throughout.

To progress in this game, you must go through the levels defeating monsters and using their parts to cook food. The food you cook is used to upgrade your character and unlock special abilities to help you get through each dungeon and boss room. There are also plenty of combinations to unlock, allowing for hours worth of fun and different difficulties for a more challenging experience.

5 Good Pizza, Great Pizza

Best Cooking Games - Good Pizza, Great Pizza

Flash games in the early days of the internet were some of the most popular games for children and teenagers to play. One of these was Papa’s flash games, with the most famous iteration being Papa’s Pizzeria. Good Pizza, Great Pizza perfectly replicates what these games brought to the table, but with even more content.

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It’s a great casual game to play by yourself, as you can relax and make pizzas for incoming customers while following the story. However, it does boil down to constantly clicking after a while, so it’s best to play a bit at a time.

4 Cook, Serve, Delicious!

Best Cooking Games - Cook, Serve, Delicious!

If you have ever wanted to cook in a fast-paced environment that stresses you out, just like working a real job at a fast food restaurant, look no further than Cook, Serve, Delicious! This game is for people who genuinely want an unforgiving, hardcore experience where you grind out orders to get to that five-star restaurant.

If you're looking for some casual fun, this might not be the one for you, as there are no difficulty settings to make it easier. But, this game has three different titles in its series, with each one providing a better experience and a different environment with each game.

3 Overcooked

Chefs preparing food in Overcooked

Overcooked is the most chaotic cooking game out right now, supporting four-player co-op, local co-op, and multiplayer to provide a frustrating yet thrilling experience. You play as a chef who is tasked by King Onion to save the world with your culinary expertise.

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Each level has some unique twist to it, and as you go further into the game, twists are combined with other challenges to make it, so that good teamwork is an absolute necessity. From ice and lava levels to cooking different dishes while speeding down the highway, Overcooked has a chaotic and fun environment.

2 Bone's Cafe

Best Cooking Games - Bone's Cafe

Bone’s Cafe is a relatively hidden cooking game despite its fun and unique concept. Take the layout of Overcooked with aspects from Graveyard Keeper and Factorio, and you’ve got a highly entertaining game that you can easily spend hundreds of hours playing.

You can play this game with up to four people while managing and building your restaurant to your heart’s content. The best part is that, to get the ingredients provided for most of your dishes, you need to kill your customers and take their meat while serving it back to them. You can then automate it with undead minions while expanding your base to become the best in the business.

1 Plate Up!

Best Cooking Games - Plate Up!

Design your restaurant with up to four players in a constantly evolving environment to get a five-star rating. The concept behind it is straightforward, but Plate Up! provides a unique aspect that so far no other cooking game has done, forcing you to do challenges and making upgrades scarce.

Doing this creates a chaotic environment where teamwork is absolutely needed, and upgrades must be carefully decided on. The idea behind it is that, if you’re not careful, you have to reset all your progress back to the beginning, which makes it incredibly difficult to get that golden five stars. But, once you get there, it is an incredible feeling after making the journey.

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