Clash of Chefs VR – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

January 30, 2022

Top 5 VR Cooking & Food Games – Quest, PC VR & More

Looking to cook up a storm in VR? We’ve got you covered — here’s our list of the best VR cooking and food games on Quest, PC VR and PSVR.

The gaming industry, and more recently the VR industry, has a bit of a love affair with the cooking genre. There’s just something about chopping, frying and assembling food in virtual reality that is so attractive to developers and players alike.

Luckily, we’re now at the stage where we have enough games to assemble a list of the top five cooking and food games across all VR platforms. We’ve ranked them from worst to best, but realistically each game brings something different to the genre — any of these are good options, depending on what you’re looking for.

5. Job Simulator – Quest, PSVR, PC VR

This is one of the oldest VR games on this list, dating all the way back to a release on the original Vive headset in 2016. It’s also not technically a full cooking game in and of itself. Job Simulator sees you take on menial tasks across a few different levels set in different work environments – a car repair shop, a convenience store, a boring office cubicle and, most importantly, behind the grill at a restaurant.

It’s that last level that gets Job Simulator a spot on this list — it’s basically the original cooking game for VR, one of the first to grace us with its presence. Since its beginnings on the Vive, Job Simulator has released on loads more platforms, including Quest 2 with enhancements, and received new modes and levels. It consistently features on the PSVR top seller charts each month and, as of January 2020, it reached 1 million units sold across all platforms.

4. Clash of Chefs VR – Quest, PC VR

Clash of Chefs VR takes the age-old premise of many cooking games – prepare food with increasingly complex ingredients and methods, for an increasingly impatient and growing customer base. There’s four kitchens with different cuisines – American, Italian, Japanese, and Mexican – but regardless of which you find yourself in, the name of the game is time management under pressure.

There’s a fair amount of content for each kitchen and there’s also a competitive multiplayer mode as well, where you are pitted against others and can throw knives or plates at your opponent chefs to disrupt them.

Clash of Chefs is a solid entry in the list, but it doesn’t bring anything particularly new to the genre. Still, if you want something simple and tested, this might be your go-to.

3. Cooking Simulator VR – PC VR

Despite the ‘simulator’ tag, this is really a part-authentic, part-slapstick mixture of cooking interactions featuring hundreds of dishes and a wide range of ingredients. As expected though, it’s all about time management and steady hands here. There’s a big focus on precision — the game will ask you to season food a specific amount, or cut items into perfectly equal pieces, which isn’t always easy with VR controllers.

There’s a career mode and a sandbox mode. Career mode will see you open a restaurant and gradually move through a selection of dishes, earning money to buy new items and upgrade your setup. The sandbox mode focuses more on fun and silliness — throw food, start fires, do whatever you want.

2. Lost Recipes – Quest

Lost Recipes is perhaps the most markedly different title on this list – where most cooking games focus on precision, pressure and time management, Lost Recipes strips this away entirely. It falls somewhere between a game, simulator and educational tool — instead of working to a clock, you simply follow the recipe at your own pace with almost no external pressure. It’s all about learning and taking your time, accurately reproducing authentic recipes from three ancient cultures.

It’s a short experience, because it’s essentially about learning how to cook these dishes and understanding the meaning behind them. It’s a slow, meditative and really special VR experience. The most amazing part is that its structured in a way that will let you take what you’ve learnt and apply it to your own cooking. I managed to cook the steamed fish in real life after playing through the level in Lost Recipes — it’s quite an amazing achievement from Schell Games.

If you want something more laid back that will focus on teaching you about the recipes and how to cook them, then Lost Recipes is your best bet.

1. Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale – Quest, PC VR

On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you want VR’s closest experience to frantic console and PC game Overcooked, then Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale is the game for you. This is a multiplayer-focused title that will require you and your friends to cooperate under increasingly stressful conditions to make sandwiches for impatient customers.

It’s all about the balance between hectic action and overwhelming chaos — as orders come in, you’ll need to work together to make sure each sandwich gets the right ingredients, in the right order. Some players will only have select ingredients in their fridge, requiring you to communicate with the other players to make sure everyone has what they need. It can be hectic and difficult, but it nails converting that chaotic and stressful Overcooked style of gameplay to a VR headset.

What’s your favorite cooking game on VR platforms? Let us know in the comments below.

November 16, 2021

Cook With Your Hands in Clash of Chefs VR’s Hand Tracking Update

Some things are just better if you use your hands, and cooking is most certainly on that list. During the summer Flat Hills Games launched Clash of Chefs VR for Oculus Quest and Quest 2 – as well as moving the PC VR version out of early access – serving up a multitude of cooking options. Today, the studio has announced the launch of a free update adding hand tracking to the Oculus Quest version.

So now you can put down your controllers and enjoy the frantic cooking experience with that added touch of realism, using your hands to cut veg, construct burgers and more. As the demo video below showcases, you can interact with everything, squeezing the sauce bottles, crushing paper cups, patting the pizza dough flat and waving to your opponent in multiplayer.

Clash of Chefs VR challenges you to keep customers happy by dishing up orders as fast as possible without making a mistake, with American, Mexican, Italian, and Japanese cuisines on offer. Featuring an 80 level single-player and a competitive PvP multiplayer, Flat Hills Games has squeezed a lot into this cooking title.

Reviewing the Oculus Quest edition of Clash of Chefs VR, VRFocus said the videogame: “has everything you could want from a VR cooking game, plenty of food, loads of modes and a nice wedge of lemon. The gameplay is fluid and once you get into a rhythm very satisfying to pump out order after order.”

Hand tracking updates have been few and far between of late, with few developers seemingly keen on utilising the technology. Unless you talk to the likes of Anotherway and Vertigo Games who released the entirely hand tracked air guitar title Unplugged last month. Let’s not forget that the new Lynx-R1 – which recently completed a successful Kickstarter – doesn’t come with controllers, hand tracking is the defacto control scheme.

Clash of Chefs VR is available for Oculus Quest and Steam VR headsets for $19.99 USD. For further hand tracking update additions, keep reading VRFocus.

September 26, 2021

Clash of Chefs VR Review: Virtual Burger Time

Clash of Chefs serves up a decent VR cooking game, though there’s room for improvement on the menu. Read on in our Clash of Chefs VR review.

Video games involving cooking have a long history, dating right back to the 8-bit microcomputers and continuing to this day. This time, developer Flat Hill Games presents players with the chance to see what life is like behind the kitchen counter of a busy restaurant with Clash of Chefs VR.

Clash of Chefs VR opens to present four different food options to choose from, American, Italian, Japanese and Mexican. The aim of the game is to prepare the requested food items and present them to your waiter, who delivers them to the waiting customers, who provide feedback on your performance in the form of little emojis. As you might expect, the orders gradually ramp up in complexity, making activity ever more frantic.

Things start out fairly simple in the American kitchen. Your first job involves making burgers; throw a patty on the grill, set out the buns, add cheese if needed and present the plate to your waiter. As you progress, more elements are added, such as salad, fries and drinks. The challenge is how best to manage your time to make sure orders are completed accurately and efficiently. The Italian kitchen likewise begins with the fairly simple task of making pizzas before ramping up the difficulty, but the Japanese and Mexican kitchens require a bit more finesse and provide a further challenge to players who have become master chefs of American and Italian cuisine.

Helpfully, there are tutorial videos that give the player beginner advice on how to start preparing each food item. These initially show at the start of each level, but this is actually the worst time to watch them, as the pace of the game dictates that you get cooking right away. The tutorials are also available to view via the options menu.

Clash of Chefs VR Review – The Facts

What is it?: A VR cooking game where you try to prepare the best meals as fast as you can with single-player and multiplayer.
Platforms: Quest, Steam
Release Date: Out Now
Price: $19.99

The visuals have a chunky, cartoonish appearance, which does mean there isn’t much visual clutter to spoil your frantic search for the right knife or ingredient, and the graphical cues to inform the player if a food item is ready or if it has spoiled are solid and easily understood. Each restaurant has its own theming to match the style of cuisine on offer, with the American kitchen having a retro diner-style, while the Italian restaurant has a marble countertop and checked tablecloths on the tables. The graphical simplicity and use of bold colors can make things look a bit flat, but since you will be focusing largely on the task at hand, graphical realism and fidelity is hardly a high priority.

Similarly the music is subdued, with appropriate ambient music being played for each restaurant style. The sound effects are nice and crisp and give a good indicator of performing the task correctly; such as the chopping sound of slicing through cucumber or sushi roll, or the sizzle of beef patties on the grill. The music and background chatter of restaurant patrons fades from your mind with the frenetic pace of gameplay, particularly in the higher levels, but the lack of a solid, immersive soundscape to drive the action is a shame.

The kitchen layouts are logical, and everything you need is accessible without moving too far in any direction. There are some issues with the game recognizing when you want to grab an item, as sometimes you will just fail to pick something up, or it will inexplicably fall out of your hand to fall to the floor, or into the nebulous void and become unreachable. Important items like your knife or cheese grater will respawn after a few seconds, but these small problems can add up over a long play session. In addition, it is difficult to use both hands at once, as the game will only seem to recognize one action at a time, adding to the frustration, particularly at higher levels.

With four different food styles to master across twenty levels each, there’s a fair amount of content to get through in Clash of Chefs VR. There’s also a good chance you will spend a while trying to get the perfect score or maximizing your workflow before feeling secure in moving on to the next level. Each restaurant can take over an hour to complete, easily providing four or more hours of content depending on how you play. There is also a competitive multiplayer mode, where chefs are pitted against each other in a race to see who can complete their orders first, with the option to throw knives or plates at your opponents to disrupt their preparation and give yourself an advantage.

Clash of Chefs VR Review – Comfort

Since Clash of Chefs VR is mostly a game about standing still and grabbing things, there are few comfort options included. Players can raise or lower the work counter to a suitable height. There is an option to turn the haptic feedback in the controllers on or of, but that’s about it.

Core gameplay for Clash of Chefs VR basically boils down to time management. The ability to be methodical and being able to plan and anticipate is a crucial skill as your advance through the levels for each style of food. Once your get into the flow, it becomes an oddly Zen experience, the movements needed burning themselves into muscle memory. This is particularly true in the endless mode, where you can just keep dishing up food to all comers and attempting to get your name on the leaderboards. The pace of gameplay is so fast there is no room to simply play around with the environment, and there’s no time to try and juggle knives, mess around with the physics or even have a proper look around.

Clash of Chefs VR Review – Final Impressions

Overall, Clash of Chefs VR is a solid game and one that can provide plenty of entertainment, particularly in multiplayer, but it fails to do anything groundbreaking or extraordinary with the genre and it does have some niggling issues that need to be resolved. If you’re after Overcooked VR, we still say go with Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale, but this is a decent addition to the genre all the same.

For more on how we arrived at this rating, read our review guidelines. What did you make of our Clash of Chefs review? Let us know in the comments below!

September 17, 2021

Review: Clash of Chefs VR

If there’s one positive thing that has cropped up from this damn pandemic is that a lot of people seemed to have improved their cooking skills. Whether that’s learning to bake for the first time or figuring out how to make an awesome lasagne, being stuck at home has forced us all to appreciate the kitchen a bit more. Or you can always order a pizza in grab your Oculus Quest and play Clash of Chefs VR, the mess-free way to test those culinary skills.

Frantic cooking titles are nothing new in the world of virtual reality (VR). Trying to see how fast you can put a burger together whilst defying the laws of physics with a tower of ten patties and way too much cheese. However, a lot of these types of videogames tend to be one-trick wonders, usually involving one cuisine and hectic gameplay so you don’t notice straight away.

Flat Hill Games’ Clash of Chefs VR on the other hand is a welcome addition to the genre because it is packed with content, and most importantly four world cuisines for you to try your hand at. American, Italian, Japanese and Mexican flavours are all available for budding VR chefs to try their hands at, some slightly more complicated than others. Everyone’s flipped a burger at some point in their lives but have you tried rolling sushi or spun your own pizza base above your head?

Ok, so first and foremost Clash of Chefs VR isn’t some cooking simulator, it isn’t going for high accuracy on the culinary front. Workstations are designed for speed and some artistic cobbling together of ingredients. As you might expect, over in the American diner you’re going to be grilling patties, cooking up some fries, slicing onions and pouring beverages. In fact, all the cuisines have some variance on this setup. Rather than frying, the Japanese kitchen has you boiling noodles and serving tea whilst the Mexican restaurant is all about frying up nachos and carefully rolling a tasty burrito.

Initially, each kitchen doesn’t look like it has a massive variety of components but rest assured once those orders start flying in the cooking process soon becomes taxing; especially if you want to keep those customers happy. Orders come in via a nice easy to read screen just under the counter, with a colour coding system indicating when customers are about to go from happy to really pissed of that they’re waiting so long (none of them is very patient). Provide a speedy correct service and you’ll get more points that all tally towards a global leaderboard.

As mentioned, Clash of Chefs VR has plenty to keep you busy because not only are there multiple cuisines to master but also modes aplenty. Each kitchen has its own Campaign mode with 20 levels to try and bust a sweat through, and it does get intense! So heading to the Casual mode certainly helps as there’s no time or customer pressure, orders come in and make them as fast as you like. It’s also a great way to learn some of the nuances if you’re one of these people who ignores all the tutorial info.

Flat Hill Games has stuffed Clash of Chefs VR with tutorial videos so there’s no introduction whatsoever, dive right in and learn on the job. Although, the videos were handy when it came to learning how to make a damn burrito, who knew it could be so technical! And that’s one of the main points to understand in Clash of Chefs VR, sure it’s a frantic arcade-style videogame but it has those kinds of Job Simulator elements everyone loves. Plus, because you’re nestled in one cosy kitchen location there’s no locomotion, most players should find the whole experience super comfortable.

On top of the Campaign and Casual modes, there’s the customary Endless mode where you try if you can really hack a kitchen job. Clash of Chefs VR also has a feather in its cap in the form of a duelling multiplayer mode. Now, this where the fun really ramps up once you’re well acquainted with the kitchens. The online mode automatically fires up, pitting you against another player in a PvP competition to serve as many meals as possible within the time limit. What’s great is that you’re opposite one another, so you can see your opponent and throw food at them if you get cocky. While it wasn’t always easy to find another player early on – which will hopefully improve in time – there’s an asynchronous mode. This allows you to compete against another’s score, just not live in real-time; still counts towards the leaderboards though.

Clash of Chefs VR has everything you could want from a VR cooking game, plenty of food, loads of modes and a nice wedge of lemon. The gameplay is fluid and once you get into a rhythm very satisfying to pump out order after order. Whilst it lacks the insane multiplayer madness of Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale, there’s enough succulent gameplay to keep you entertained for hours. An entertaining VR cooking experience through and through.

September 10, 2021

The VR Drop: Serving Up a Sci-fi Tale

Welcome to another Friday VR Drop, your regular round-up of the virtual reality (VR) videogames due for release in the coming week. The selection features new games, updates and more, plenty to keep virtual reality (VR) players busy for a while.

Cave Digger 2: Dig Harder – VRKiwi

The original Cave Digger was a quirky little title, dropping players in a mining experience all about finding riches and unlocking multiple endings. As the name implies, Cave Digger 2: Dig Harder takes things up a notch with an adventure videogame set within a wild west dieselpunk world. Providing both solo and multiplayer gameplay, you and three friends can mine your way through various biomes, upgrading tools and weapons to aid this dangerous journey deep underground.

Supported platforms: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Valve Index
Launch date: 14th September

Table of Tales: The Crooked Crown – Tin Man Games

Originally released for PlayStation VR in 2019, Table of Tales: The Crooked Crown is a single-player tabletop RPG. A mixture of swashbuckling and sorcery, you lead a party of scoundrels through more than 24 encounters utilising turn-based combat featuring dice, cards, skill checks and over 40 different types of enemy.

Supported platforms: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index and Windows Mixed Reality
Launch date: 15th September

Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge Part 2 – ILMxLAB

Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge arrived last year for Oculus Quest and next week sees the concluding part, adding a whole new roster of characters, main campaign and two smaller side tales. The DLC update is called Last Call and sees you head back into Batuu to recover an ancient artefact whilst the tales see you take on the role of a class four assassin droid IG-88 infiltrating a fortress. The second tale continues Ady’Sun Zee’s narrative set during the High Republic era.

Supported platforms: Oculus Quest
Launch date: 15th September

Clash of Chefs VR – Flat Hill Games

Leaving Steam Early Access as well as arriving on Oculus Quest for the first time, Clash of Chefs VR serves up a fast and frantic cooking experience where players can tackle an 80 level single-player or go head-to-head in the multiplayer. Chefs are challenged to prepare American, Italian, and Japanese recipes as fast as possible.

Supported platforms: Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index and Windows Mixed Reality
Launch date: 16th September

August 23, 2021

Clash Of Chefs Brings More Overcooked Action To Oculus Quest And PC VR Next Month

Ready for more Overcooked-style action in VR? Clash of Chefs will deliver just that next month.

Flat Hill Games delivers another manic take on VR cooking on Oculus Quest and PC VR headsets on September 16 (and that’s a confirmed Quest Store release too). It was already available on Steam in Early Access, but will graduate to a full release on that day. Check out the release date trailer for the game below.

Clash of Chefs VR Trailer

In Clash of Chefs players will find themselves fulfilling the demands of hungry customers, flipping burgers, making burritos and ladling on the sauce. The experience comes with 80 single-player levels that are themed after different cuisines as well as a competitive multiplayer mode in which players will compete for high scores. Expect to chop onions, pour drinks and try to keep customers satisfied as orders come in thick and fast.

VR is no stranger to Overcooked-inspired titles. If you’re looking for something with a co-op focus you can also check out Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale from Resolution Games. There’s no word on a possible PSVR release for Clash of Chefs as of right now, though.

Will you be picking up Clash of Chefs VR next month? Let us know in the comments below.

May 13, 2021

Clash of Chefs VR Serves Up a Tasty Meal on Oculus Quest This Summer

Flat Hill Games released its cooking videogame Clash of Chefs VR as a Steam Early Access title back in 2018 for PC VR headsets. This summer Clash of Chefs is set to officially launch, leaving Early Access whilst natively supporting the Oculus Quest platform.

For the last couple of years Clash of Chefs VR has been serving up a fast and frantic cooking experience where players can tackle an 80 level single-player or go head-to-head in the multiplayer. Budding virtual chefs will be challenged to prepare American, Italian, and Japanese recipes as fast as possible, juggling various stations as they create ever more complex meals.

From slapping a simple burger together to plating up a bowl of ramen, to hit the top of those online leaderboards players will need to carefully ensure the right amount of beans go in the burritos, shredded cheese doesn’t overwhelm pasta bowls and the salad is finely chopped.

It doesn’t all need to be serious work though. Have some fun along the way by unleashing your inner Gordon Ramsey, smashing plates on the floor, throwing an onion in the waiters face or grabbing the condiment bottles to create a fountain or sauce.

“Oculus Quest’s catalog is hyper-curated to ensure a high degree of player satisfaction and great return on investment for developers,” says Adrian Djura, CEO and Founder of Flat Hill Games in a statement. “We’re proud that our virtual food frenzy, Clash of Chefs VR, will soon be featured among other quality titles on the headset’s platform.”

As Clash of Chefs VR will be leaving Early Access Flat Hill Games will providing a bunch of new content for current players to enjoy, with a new themed restaurant, achievements, and customization options just some of the new features.

Clash of Chefs VR will be available for Oculus Quest Summer 2021, providing cross-platform gameplay with the Steam version. For all the latest Oculus Quest content updates keep reading VRFocus.

May 13, 2021

Cook Up A Storm In Clash Of Chefs VR, Coming To Quest And PC VR This Summer

Get your chefs hats on, because another cooking game is coming to Oculus Quest and PC VR.

Clash of Chefs VR will see you prepare food from a bunch of different cuisines with increasingly complicated recipes in virtual kitchens around the world. Flat Hill Games is developing the game, which will leave Early Access on PC VR and arrive on the Quest platform sometime this summer. That’s on the full Quest store too, not App Lab.

According to the Steam page, there are over 60 levels to work through in single-player mode with increasingly different recipes.

Given the nature of the game, the obvious comparison will be made to Resolution Games’ Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale. However, it seems that Clash of Chefs will focus on a more diverse range of foods and not just sandwiches. Not only will the cuisine vary, but so will your environments – there’s an American restaurant, an Italian restaurant and a Japanese one as well.

It sounds like things can get quite complicated – in the American kitchen, you’ll be managing veggies and meats for burgers, as well as fries and drinks on the side. The Italian restaurant will task you with making delicious pizza and pasta, while you’ll be managing sushi rolls and ramen in the Japanese restaurant.

In addition to single-player, there will also be online multiplayer so you can compete against your friends, plus a global leaderboard to see how you stack up against the rest of the world.

Clash of Chefs VR exits Early Access on Steam for PC VR and makes its way onto the Oculus Store for Quest later this summer.

November 8, 2018

Spatulas at the Ready as Clash of Chefs VR Prepares for a Cook-off

One videogame that most virtual reality (VR) enthusiast should have tried at some point is Owlchemy Labs comedy working title Job Simulator: The 2050 Archives. If like VRFocus one of your favourite parts was the cooking section then you’ll likely want to take a look at Flat Hill Games’ upcoming experience Clash of Chefs VR, due to launch later this month.

Clash of Chefs VR

Due to arrive via Steam Early Access on 16th November, Clash of Chefs VR is a cook-off title where players have to create delicious recipes against the clock. Featuring both single-player missions and multiplayer modes, players will be able to test their skills in the kitchens of the world each featuring new recipes and 20 challenging single-player levels.

“I’m really happy that we made a game that is fun, fast and addictive. Even happier to see how fast-growing our community is, that was surely unexpected!,” said Adrian Djura, Flat Hill Games CEO in a statement.

Clash of Chefs VR has been designed as a comfortable experience for all, so there are no smooth locomotion or teleportation options. with a room-scale kitchen where everything is close to hand, all players need to worry about is flipping burgers, chopping veg and making sure the bacon doesn’t burn.

Clash of Chefs VR

For the Early Access launch Clash of Chefs VR will feature one kitchen – the American Diner – with 20 levels for single-player and various recipes for burgers (with vegetables and condiments), fries and two flavours of soda. Multiplayer will also be available.

As for the final version, the team note: “We plan to have several different restaurants with food and drinks, recipes from around the world. We intend for each kitchen to boast around 20 single player levels. Achievements are planned, as well as online multiplayer, with diverse game modes for both single and multiplayer. Further development will include an additional kitchen and recipes, as updates.”

When Clash of Chefs VR arrives on 16th November it’ll support HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets, retailing for $20 USD. For further updates keep reading VRFocus.