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Kitchen Crisisis a challenging tower defense game with a culinary theme. One small change to your kitchen setup can be the difference between a perfect run and the collapse of your carefully-planned menu, so you need to carefully consider every move you make while planning.
Just getting through the first few stages can be an accomplishment, especially if you’re aiming to get a flawless three-star rating. If you need help optimizing your setup or selecting dishes, try these tips. Efficiency is the name of the game, but that means different things on each stage.
Limit Your Chefs' Movement
Once the restaurant is open for business, youdon’t have any control over how your chefs operate.They’ll try to contribute to every dish that they can work on, which can lead to recipes being left half-finished for long periods of time if you aren’t careful.
When building your kitchen,use stones and appliances to block chefs into designated work areas.Chefs who can only work on one or two dishes will complete them much more quickly, and there’s no risk of them wasting valuable seconds walking all the way across the kitchen to help with another meal.
Single-ingredient dishes can be rapidly produced byboxing a chef into a single spacewhere they can prep, cook, and serve the entire course without moving.
Group Recipes That Use The Same Appliances
Space quickly becomes limited as you add more complicated dishes to your menu, especially if you’re trying to minimize chef movement as described above. you’re able to save a lot of space bychoosing multiple recipes that use the same appliancesand grouping them into a single work space.
There are two reasons for this; first, chefs can easily prepare every meal for which they’re responsible, since they can simply use the nearest available appliance instead of having to seek out a different type. Second,appliance upgrades scale very quicklythe more points you put into them. Having most of your menu rely on a high-level appliance drastically reduces prep time, allowing you to cook more meals over the course of the day.
Some appliance upgrades have layout requirements; Fryers need to beaway from any other appliancesto get their excellent speed bonus, while Potsshould be grouped together as much as possible.
Use Ingredient Enhancements To Create Combos
Ingredient Enhancements candrastically alter the effects of a dishwhen eaten, especially if there are multiple such ingredients in a high-level meal. This allows you to create combos that will help feed everyone who comes through your restaurant portal.
Once an ingredient is enhanced, it will add its new effect toevery dish that uses it.That means you might want toinclude certain ingredients in a specific dish while avoiding others.For example, if you give an ingredient theHearty Foodbonus, which increases its total Satisfaction, it’s counterproductive to use it in the same recipe as an ingredient withSharingorQuick Cook, since those both reduce Satisfaction for other effects.
Instead, try combiningSharingwith an ingredient that hasRelaxorSlow Steps, and placing it before the main course. This makes it so that more guests will eat it at once, suffering the speed debuff that comes from it, then stuff themselves as they spend more time in range of the Hearty dish!
There are tons of possible combos like this, so don’t be afraid to experiment.
Use Quick Dishes To Buy Time For Bigger Ones
It’s important to havedishes of varying complexity on your menu.High-level meals fill guests the fastest, butcan take a long time to prepareand often get fewer servings total as a result. Quick, easy dishes, especially on an early serving table, canfill up guests before they reach the main course, giving the chefs on the complex tasks more time to prepare.
If you can, try to have one or two low-level dishes thatoffer enough Satisfactionto dispatch smaller guests (around 150-300 Satisfaction). This gives the main course the room it needs to fill the larger aliens. If all of your guests have a high Satisfaction rating, use your appetizers toslow them downor inflict other debuffs instead.
Try to have one chef working on a dish for each ingredient that it uses.
Plan Your Menu Based On Your Guests
The aliens of Kitchen Crisis have very different traits and tastes, so each stage will require a different approach. For example, the guests inStage 3all have a fairly low Satisfaction, but there are a lot of them. This means that you can make heavy use ofSharingto feed many of them at once, rather than focusing on complex, heavy meals.
Squigs can’t get more than 100 Satisfaction at a time, so it’s a waste of resources to feed them with anything that offers more than that amount.
By tailoring your menu to the specific needs of your guests, you’re much more likely to send them all home full and happy.
Reset Your Skills
Each time you complete a stage with a chef for the first time, that chef getsAttribute Pointsthat can be added to their skill tree. Since each stage has different challenges, it can be useful toreset your chef’s skillsand optimize for the coming stage rather than try to create an all-purpose build.
The exact needs of your build will vary by chef; the Student starts weak but is very adaptable, while Alpha Plus is incredibly efficient buthas to do everything himself.As you unlock new chefs, see what strategies work for them that aren’t viable with others!
Choose Recipes You Already Have
The game doesn’t do a very good job of telling you this, but it’s one of the most important mechanics; if you select a recipe that’s already on your menu at the start of a new day, itdoesn’t replace an existing recipe.Instead, you canserve an additional tablewith that recipe!
By creating several serving locations for the same recipe, you can allow your chefs tocover more of the dining areaor go all-in on a specific dish with a swarm of chefs working around the clock. It’sone of the most efficient ways to keep on top of your guests' demands, especially if the recipe in question uses your best ingredients and appliances.
