When you eat roadkill, you don’t immediately think it’s going to be a business success. Monster Meals takes that premise and runs with it, making an entire business selling literal roadkill to customers. Fortunately, everyone involved doesn’t mind as long as it tastes good. Your goal is to serve customers quickly while adapting to a series of challenges. There’s nothing nefarious going on but the food you serve becomes increasingly complex.
Monster Meals is a multiplayer cooking game by Giant Warrior Studio where some monster friends start a business. During an overnight gathering outside, one monster decides to eat a passing insect. It turns out to be delicious and the monster shares their idea with their friends. This rapidly evolves into a business where you serve roadkill to customers in a variety of methods. As your business grows, so does your menu.
Monster Meals is great for quick and silly fun and has you running around to serve customers while harvesting food. The learning curve isn’t complex and there’s enough variety to keep you entertained for a while. However, the gameplay can be repetitive after a while because it remains fundamentally the same. Monster Meals needs multiplayer to extend its fun, but if you do just want quick fun with friends, then it’s the game for you.
It’s an interesting idea but it’s similar to a few titles. The real draw is that you can play with friends which adds lots of humorous chaos. Chefs running around tackling roadkill before cooking and serving the results to customers is inherently funny. Even more hilarity ensues if something crazy happens like falling off a ledge or attacking the wrong ingredient. The chaos is amusing and fun to watch and it’s even more exciting when problems occur and you must deal with them.
Something Monster Meals does well is push the absurdity of the gameplay at all times. You coax wildlife from containers or harvest them from the environment directly. You dash around to quickly fulfill orders and get food cooked. Serving up your “delicacies” is gross and hilarious. It’s not disgusting enough to turn you off gameplay but uncomfortable enough that it’s funny. That charm keeps you playing because you are wondering what comes next.
Unfortunately, apart from level progression, there’s little to play for. It’s a multiplayer game where you try to get the highest score possible. You can have lots of fun with friends but your rewards are cosmetic and won’t affect gameplay. Attacking wildlife with swords or driving around in a different-colored vehicle is nice but nothing actually changes. This is a game that’s all about quick and simple fun. There’s nothing wrong with that but it never grows past its station.
Unless you have a few friends over, Monster Meals isn’t going to retain your attention for long. And even with friends, you will quickly get bored if you play it for a long time. There are no goals other than cosmetics and honing your skills doesn’t pay off much. While being simple helps make Monster Meals accessible, it also means there’s not as much to do.
Monster Meals promises a fun time and there’s a lot of enjoyment as you serve customers. It’s a quick co-op game that lets you enjoy a silly premise with friends. However, it quickly wears out its welcome because it isn’t meant to be played for extended periods of time and there isn’t much to play for or master. Enjoy the premise and bring along a friend for some silly fun., but don’t play too often or you risk ruining the game’s charm.
Victor played Monster Meals on PC with a review code.
