Gryph is Playing World End Diner | Hidden Gem | (#Blaugust 2023 #23)

World End Diner title screen. Various forest animals are in a clearing, surrounding what appears to be a broken robot. The game is 2D pixel art in design.

My weekend has gotten away from me due to pets and extra errands, but in trying to find something relaxing to do between tasks I stumbled onto a game that is absolutely my jam. I’d never heard of it, but it came up a couple times on random Reddit threads while I was googling “cozy cooking games,” and I was intrigued enough to check it out.

In World End Diner, you are a robot who is cooking for forest animals and fellow robots. I don’t know yet why the world ended, or how, or why I’m cooking for rabbits and otters and robots. I also don’t really care because this is the cozy cooking simulator I didn’t know I was looking for.

A bonus skill tree showing you can unlock increased production over various activities.

A recipe skill tree. This one shows various foods made in a frying pan, like fried eggs, pancakes, and popcorn. There are other tabs in this menu for recipe trees for the oven and other appliances. There's also farming, foraging, and alchemy.

Want lots of skill trees to work on? The game slowly opens up more and more as you play, and I know I haven’t unlocked them all yet. Want variety in your cooking early on? The game unlocks quite a few cooking stations during its intro tutorial, guaranteeing you won’t be stuck just making basic salads for too long.

There’s some simple farming, foraging, and exploration that do the job without being too much of a time sink (at least those aspects haven’t been too much of a time sink in my first 10 hours). There’s a little bit of building sim as you can expand your diner, eating area, and farm as well as buying new things to put into them. There’s also a basic cleaning mechanic where sometimes an area will be messy after an animal eats there. If you don’t clean it up, no one else can sit down and it takes away from the other diners’ satisfaction with their visit.

The player robot is planting corn seeds in a smallish 6x8 garden plot.

The player robot is harvesting corn from a 6x12 garden plot. Other crops are still growing. There is a scarecrow in the center top of the field.

But what I’m really loving is that thing I was talking about where I want a goal in a cooking sim, but not to be overwhelmed or under huge time pressure? This game. This next screen shot, read the tutorial box in the upper right corner. I’ll also provide the text below.

[The tutorial text reads: “It’s a new morning. By the way: aren’t you working hard every day? Sometimes it’s a good idea to close the store for a whole day and make it a holiday. Why don’t you go exploring slowly and enjoy the remodeling of the store. There are no disadvantages to closing the store. Please close and open the store when you like and play with it.]

That’s right. You can close your diner for the day to do other things with no penalty. The animals don’t start disliking you, your food doesn’t go bad, you don’t get a bunch of angry customers. It’s just closed for the day and you won’t make money until you open again. The game actively encourages you to sometimes take a holiday, and I am here for it.

Player robot is standing in a kitchen with multiple ovens, stoves, etc. She ahs her "stock" box open showing various foods including salads, fries, pancakes, soup, popcorn, and yogurt. — I also appreciate that while you can cook while your diner is open, you don’t have to. Most of the cooking goes into the Stock box, which is what the animals actually order from. Other than pulling drinks (which you could also do ahead of time if you wanted) you don’t even need to cook as you go if you don’t want to.

You can choose to open or close your diner at any point in the day, other than a mandatory close at 23:00 to get you in bed by midnight. When your diner is open, the animals wait patiently at the counter for you. You’re encouraged to serve as many as possible through experience and money bonuses for hitting certain goals. Also because in general you’ll get more experience and money by serving more customers – but the animals and robots don’t seem to have wait timers. (At least not that I’ve seen so far.) They don’t give up and leave if you take a minute. And they only build up at the counter to the degree that there are empty seats – if you want to ignore the pile of animals at the entrance that’s fine. They all just sit there, looking cute. 🙂

A hedgehog is at the counter ordering onion rings, and a squirrel orders a fried egg.

It’s that freedom I want in a cozy game. Give me incentive to do things, yes. But don’t make me feel like there’s a ticking clock on the things I don’t feel like doing right this moment. That’s not cozy, to me. And after decades in various forms of customer service work, I don’t like seeing a line of people waiting. A line of animals? That’s much more relaxing to me.

The game is obviously a 2D pixel art, older style game, which doesn’t bother me when it’s well done as it seems to be here. The animals are adorable, and the more I expand my diner the more different types show up. There’s actually been quite a few interesting things that happened and new characters that have shown up as time goes by, but I don’t want to spoil them. There’s also some interesting tidbits of lore I’ve found while exploring the surrounding area.

The diner is closed for the day. You can see various decorations the player either purchased or was gifted by animals hanging on the side of the counter. A couple places at the tables are dirty, showing smudged marks, though you can't see the bright green bubble animation in this pic.

There are some translations that aren’t perfect, but everything is readable and understandable in English. Really, it’s a game where that isn’t taking anything away from my enjoyment. As far as I can tell, this is being done by one person so I’m glad they’ve done translations at all. The music is downright soothing and the sound design is really quite good – the noise the fryer makes is absolutely satisfying. And the birdsong/forest sounds are also lovely.

World End Diner is listed as Early Access, and seems to have been listed that way for some time, but I gotta tell you it’s been a more complete and enjoyable experience in the first 10 hours than some games I’ve seen listed as complete. It looks like there have been periodic updates, including one just this last June, so the dev is still involved.

I wasn’t planning on another “Gryph is Playing” post so soon after the last one, but I found this game by accident and I had to talk about it. I don’t know if I’m going to have time to stream today – this weekend has been kind of a wash for streaming – but I hope to do so soon. I love games with a mystery apocalypse, I love games with animals, and I’m a sucker for cooking games right now. 🙂

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