I missed a demo that could have been coupled with my last post on Next Fest June Edition. It’s fine, I’ll just talk about it this week. Customers are the bad guys, and I must feed them with my deck of food cards.

This week is Arcane Eats.

Arcane Eats is a food-themed roguelite deckbuilder from Wonderbelly Games and published by Skystone Games. The game will release on all modern platforms this year.

I know that owning a restaurant is nothing like playing a card game, but in this fantasy game, cooking is boiled down to a deckbuilder where you feed angry customers before they destroy your mental health with their hurtful words.

You have 3 energy per turn, three burners to cook on, and draw 5 cards per turn. Customers have hunger numbers, and you have cards that produce that number, feed them so they leave the restaurant (AND PAY). You can stack foods and garnishes to make the number bigger, so you can deal more damage. The restaurant is open for a certain amount of time and will close when the last customer is served, eats, and pays. At the end of the day a receipt shows up with how much money you made for the day and the dishes you served (all of the names are fun and goofy). What I like the most about Arcane Eats is the art on the art and on the finished plate.

It makes me hungry.

Customers have something to do at every turn, which can include slapping away food, increasing damage, getting distracted, eagerness, and even switching up plates. It is a nice spin on difficulty. You will have built up this magnificent plate, and then a boss will mess it all up and ruin its greatness! Mental health is an HP on the side, and customers, mostly, deal damage every turn, and it can be mitigated with cards that generate tough (shield). Garnishes provide added benefits to dishes, like spice (that works like doom in Slay the Spire 2) and chill (delaying an attack for a certain number of turns).

All of these fun, non-starter deck cards are available in the shops that are only open on certain days of the week (certainly appropriately named) for a cost. There are lots of options to choose from, and it looks like there are a lot of different viable deck strategies, which makes me even more eager to play it. There is also another shop that provides buffs to specific cards, like looking at the top few cards and taking one, burning, stacking, etc.

It is fun having to navigate who to feed first while threat assessing the other customers to make sure you do not lose the game.

So far, Arcane Eats is a fantastic demo and a really fun deck builder. I had a lot of fun with the basic potato starter deck, trying to get through the week, and facing the final boss. I was lucky to have a card that creates 3 copies and places them on burners, and then I stacked on top until I had plates that deal 15-20 in 3 turns! There is a lot in the demo, and it was easy to feel overwhelmed, but I locked in and realized that I only really needed to understand the vocabulary the game used. After that it was smooth sailing.

I 100% Reccomend Arcane Eats