Pick ingredients off a conveyor belt. Drag them around a plate. Try to unlock point combos and hope your incredible, edible abominations pass muster with an idiosyncratic cast of anthropomorphic guests. Omelet You Cook is a tight, simple, rewarding roguelike with more than enough personality and flare to earn a seat at the table. The only thing I want to do after I lose is fire up the grill all over again.
Omelet You Cook was really neat when it hit Steam Early Access in early 2025. It’s even cooler now after it’s launched in 1.0. It’s a cooking roguelike in which you select ingredients and get awarded points based on how they’re arranged on top of an omelet according to an ever more intricate cascade of scoring rules. The spatial strategizing and arrangement synergies are where the Luck Be a Landlord flavor comes in. Points that blaze more intensely the better you do and an in-game economy for purchasing items that bestow special perks is where the Balatro feel comes into play.
But like the best games in this RNG triage, min-maxing roguelike genre, Omelet You Cook exists as something more than the sum of its parts that can’t simply be reduced to its obvious inspirations. There are elements of cozy sims and chillout puzzle games here, with unique and finicky patrons reminiscent of Animal Crossing villagers, each with different dietary restrictions and preferences. The emphasis on how food is positioned and empty space is managed reminds me a bit of the calming fiddliness of A Little to the Left.
This is the part where I tell you that if you tried Omelet You Cook last summer and liked it then, there’s a whole lot more to love now. Nearly two dozen updates and seven months later, February’s 1.0 update (released early to get ahead of Slay the Spire 2) includes a bunch of different modes as well as the option to do the whole game turn-based if the conveyor belt continually moving was getting too stressful. There’s a Black Apron difficulty and a final showdown with Principal Clucker himself, the chicken that roasts your chef skills every time you fail.
While the combo chaos is great for math nerds and the absurd recipes are fun and silly, I think Omelet You Cook‘s greatest strength is its quirky animal characters and light but satisfying conversational bits. There’s a generous spirit that comes through in the hospitality work and sense of community within the game, that games like Luck Be a Landlord and Balatro don’t have. It’s slight but touching, with shades of Donut County. The music is delightful. The visuals are splendid. Every screen and object buzzes with vibrant energy.
It took over 500 Steam reviews for Omelet You Cook to get its first negative one, and that was just somebody being a dick. Play it and you’ll instantly understand why.
