Cooking Festival

The largest title in this section by some margin. Cooking Festival is a management sim rather than a recipe game: stations run in parallel, dishes take different lengths of time, and progression moves you between cuisines — pancakes, grilled ribs, Italian pizza, ice cream — each with its own station behaviour.

What makes it hold up is that the stations are genuinely different. A grill needs turning, an oven needs waiting, and a cold station needs assembling in order, so a player who has learned one cuisine is only partly prepared for the next.

It runs at full widescreen and it is the one game here that genuinely benefits from a large display: with six stations live, a phone screen makes the pass hard to read. Worth starting on a desktop even if you continue elsewhere.

1. Read the incoming orders at the pass.
2. Start dishes at the stations they belong to.
3. Return to each station when its stage is ready.
4. Plate and serve, then invest in upgrades between levels.

Start every slow station before touching a fast one. Ovens and grills run without you; assembly does not, and a level is usually lost by leaving an oven empty rather than by plating late.