Secondly, after a dish is fully finished, you're scored up to 100 points for how well you did during the entire deal. Firstly, after you complete a particular task/mini-game, you're graded in a bronze/silver/gold method, where performing flawlessly will net you a gold medal and totally botching up will net you often humorous results, a bronze medal, and the fiery-eyed wrath of Mama.

Almost a separate set of tasks in and of itself, these mini-stages follow a Simon-Says method of following directions at the correct time, such as changing the heat on an oven, adding ingredients, and stirring your dish.Įach stage is graded in two ways. In addition, at the end of practically every dish, you're required to cook, stew, bake, or otherwise finish the food you'd spent the rest of the time preparing. There are a few, however, that quickly grow tired and annoying you'll find yourself chopping onions and cucumbers and the like constantly, and even though it's only in four recipes total, Cooking Mama performs an admirable feat in making peeling potatoes even more tedious and difficult than in real life. Somehow, even though there are anywhere from three to 10 mini-games per dish, the game's unique quality keeps all but a few from being repetitive and boring. Each one consists of a handful of short, five- to 10-second tasks, drawing from a communal pool of possibly 30 mini-games total arranged into the general order one would have to do such things to prepare dishes. Instead of stages, Cooking Mama divides your play sessions into recipes – 76 of them, to be specific. Almost identical in control to the earlier DS title Wario Ware: Touched!, Cooking Mama uses the stylus and touch-screen exclusively for its control, save for a few moments where blowing into the microphone is necessary. If that sounds a bit like a culinary Wario Ware, that's because it really is.

No, instead, the Cooking Mama in question is a kind of mentor and overseer of your own cooking prowess, there to praise you when you do well and there for her eyes to spontaneously combust when you do poorly.Īt its core, Cooking Mama is a string of mini-games arranged in an order to allow you to prepare recipes. Likewise, in no way do you play as a mama that cooks. One example is one of 2005's highest rated games, Psychonauts, but more recently is a somewhat obscure, quirky little Japanese kitchen game by the name of Cooking Mama.Īll you cannibals in the audience, put down your bibs – this is not a game about cooking mothers. Majesco is extremely successful in picking up titles so outlandish and unusual that they naturally warrant closer looks. However, in order for a game to be truly unique in its setting, it has to think outside the box.

Action movie plots, fantasy settings, endlessly cascading waves of abstract objects, and ancient civilizations are all common sources of game design materials. Some things are obvious choices for game ideas.

Mini games cooking mama