Space Chef Is the Weird Little Switch Game I Can’t Stop Playing

Every once in a while, I find a game that completely sneaks up on me. I start playing because it looks interesting, tell myself I’m going to try it for a little while, and then suddenly I’m planning my evening around what I need to accomplish next in a fictional world.

That is currently what is happening to me with Space Chef.

I originally thought I would include it in a roundup of games I accidentally played much longer than I intended. That seemed appropriate after the first few sessions. Then I kept playing. I stayed up until 11 one night because every time I thought I was finished, I found one more delivery, ingredient, upgrade or little task I wanted to complete.

At that point, Space Chef had earned its own article.

What makes this especially funny is that after all that playing, I watched the trailer and realized I have apparently barely scratched the surface. There are planets, systems and parts of the game I haven’t even reached yet. So this isn’t really a traditional finished-game review. It’s more about why this weird little game has already completely hooked me.

So What Exactly Is Space Chef?

Space Chef is a cooking, exploration and management game set in the Horseshoe Nebula. You start with your grandmother’s old cookbook and a very modest setup, then head out into space to collect ingredients, cook meals, deliver orders and slowly build your reputation as a chef.

But calling it a cooking game makes it sound much simpler than it actually is. You fly to alien planets, gather resources, hunt creatures for ingredients, craft equipment, upgrade your ship and kitchen, decorate your restaurant, meet characters and complete quests. The finished game includes five major alien planets, more than 180 creatures and plants, over 100 craftable items and more than 150 furnishings and decorations.

There is also an actual story happening underneath all of this, involving a rather ominous interstellar burger empire, because apparently even outer space cannot escape chain restaurants.

One quest had me making a drink for a tribe of aliens, but there were a few steps before anyone was getting refreshments. First, the Froll Chief wanted me to kill five creatures. Once I completed that task, he gave me a drink recipe, and then I had to hunt down the ingredients.

That’s a good example of how the different parts of Space Chef connect. Meeting a character leads to combat, which leads to a recipe, which gives me another reason to explore. Cooking starts well before I’m back in the kitchen. Apparently, even on an alien planet, I cannot escape running errands.

The Small Indie Team Behind Space Chef

One of the things that made me like Space Chef even more was learning a little about the people who made it.

Blue Goo Games is a Swedish indie studio, and Space Chef is the team’s first released game. The project was created by longtime friends Niclas Marie and Tobias Tranell, who had known each other since childhood and had experimented with smaller game projects together before deciding to tackle something much bigger.

That combination is interesting because those are also two of the things that stand out immediately when you play. There are a lot of interconnected systems running underneath the game, but visually it also has an incredibly specific personality. It looks hand-drawn, messy in the best possible way, and completely unlike most of the games sitting next to it on the Switch.

The game’s development story also explains why Space Chef feels like several games somehow mashed together. Tobias explained in an interview with Arcweave that the original concept was closer to a sci-fi action game where the main character simply happened to have been a chef. Once they decided the chef should actually be able to cook, the idea kept expanding.

And I’m very glad it did, because all those moving parts are exactly what I’m enjoying.

It Has a Little Dave the Diver and Stardew Valley in Its DNA

The easiest way I can explain why Space Chef works for me is that it gives me a little bit of the same feeling I get from Dave the Diver and Stardew Valley, even though it doesn’t actually play like either one.

Dave the Diver constantly changes what you’re doing. You explore, collect things, manage the restaurant, improve equipment and then suddenly the game throws another system at you. Space Chef has some of that same restless energy. I never feel like I’m only cooking or only gathering ingredients for very long.

Stardew Valley gives me a different feeling that Space Chef also taps into: gradually building up your own little world. You improve things, unlock things, collect resources and always have another small goal waiting for you. Space Chef scratches that same part of my brain, except instead of farming turnips I’m flying across the galaxy looking for something edible that may or may not try to kill me first.

That combination is dangerous for me.

The “One More Thing” Loop Is the Real Problem

This is the part of Space Chef that has gotten me completely.

I’ll decide I’m going to make one delivery before I stop playing. Then I realize I’m missing an ingredient, so I fly somewhere to get it. While I’m there, I find resources I need for an upgrade. Once I have enough for the upgrade, obviously I want to see what it does. Then another order comes in, and now I already have most of the ingredients for that one, so I might as well finish it too.

Suddenly another hour has disappeared.

Nothing individually feels like a huge commitment. That’s the trick. Space Chef keeps handing you small, satisfying objectives, and there never seems to be a natural moment when my brain says, “Okay, we are definitely finished now.”

What makes it work so well is that the tasks all feed into each other. Gathering ingredients helps with cooking. Cooking helps with orders. Orders help build your reputation. Exploring gets you resources. Resources open up upgrades. Every little thing feels useful, so even when I’m technically getting sidetracked, it never feels like I’m wasting time.

That is exactly the kind of game loop that gets me. I don’t need one giant goal hanging over me. Give me ten small things I can make progress on, and apparently I will keep going until I look at the clock and wonder how it got so late.