- [p]Added a number of performance tweaks and improvements.[/p]
- [p]Fixed an issue with non-Steam launchers launching upon boot.[/p]
- [p]Changed six story based achievements to be awarded upon completing a level, rather than on the main menu, to prevent a lot of hidden trophies being awarded using the "Unlock All Levels" option. [/p]
Cook Serve Forever
Patch v0.99.05
Patch v0.99.01
- You can now map custom keybinds in the Control menu under Options.
- Fixed some minor spelling and graphical errors.
- Added a layer of polish across many minor graphical assets and text.
- Updated credits.
- Added support for future platforms.
- Improved Steam Deck support (now officially Verified!)- the game will now auto set to Steam Deck glyphs in the options menu the first time you boot this up with this patch. Changes in the options menu will set this to your custom settings if you do not want to use the Deck glyphs.
- Corrected button labeling for Steam Deck preset.
- Made Cloned the default preset for keyboard keys.
If you are using a Steam Deck, be sure to turn off the Proton Experimental option if you haven't already- the default Proton version works great with the game now! Thanks everyone!
-David
Patch v0.95.05
PATCH v0.95
- Added some additional art for the Preacher for the Church of the Sun God level.
- Improved readability of recipe names in-game.
- Fixed some minor spelling mistakes.
- Fixed the sticker silhouette of the Party District that looked like a locked level icon.
- Fixed incorrect resolution of 2160x1440 (is now 2560x1440)
- Fixed issue of obscured highlighter in the cookbook.
- Fixed some clipping of certain stickers in the game's UI and cookbook.
MASSIVE Update v0.95 Now Available!
The entire game is now content complete! Finish the story as Nori travels through Helianthus with Brie as you discover new locations, foods, and tons more challenges!
I'm so proud of the speed of which we were able to get the game to this completed state. We're still going to be adding some new additions such as customizable key binds, and we're now finishing up the game for console release in the summer.
What's Next?
Along with v0.99's keybind options and some small fixes/improvements we're aiming for in June, we're now transitioning over to full speed ahead on Cook, Serve, Delicious: Re-Mustard!, as we're aiming to get the game out this year. I'm working on console ports right now for CSF and those will be out this summer, so look forward to a smattering of delish games this year!
Finally, thank you so so much to all of you who have left reviews. It has helped so much and our goal is to get out of Mixed reviews before v1.0 this summer, and I know we can do it with this last major update, as I'm so proud of all the amazing content you're about to enjoy. From all of us on the CSF team, thank you.
NEW ADDITIONS
- Several new chapters and over 25 new locations, all new Cooking School challenges, and the full campaign/story is now available!
- All new Cookbook lets you view your sticker progress once you complete Blossom Square in New Beginnings.
- Steam Deck is now fully supported without the need to use Proton Experimental. Please disable "force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" if you were using this to play on Steam Deck prior to this update. We will be submitting this to get Steam Deck verified soon!
CHANGES AND IMPROVEMENTS
- All new Game Maker engine build that should help performance and video playback performance on all devices.
- New background of Charlotte and Young Nori cooking for the opening tutorial.
- New tutorial splash for Blossom Square (New Beginnings) introducing players to the Cookbook.
- Altered the Steaming prep step for a bit more variety.
- Improved main menu preload and performance.
- Improved controller UI main menu clarity for smaller displays and Steam Deck.
- Updated the After Hours initial cutscenes for improved bitrates.
- Accuracy is now properly balanced with missed holding steps (your accuracy will no longer be heavily penalized when holding down the wrong button).
BUG FIXES
- Fixed an issue with certain sounds not properly balanced volume-wise.
- Fixed an issue with Cooking School VO not properly tied to VO volume adjustments.
- Improved opening fullscreen/window adjustment at game start.
- Missed inputs no longer regsiter immediately after unpausing the game with the A button in specific circumstances.
- Pressing start while paused now unpauses the menu (if you're in the "top" main pause menu and not in the options screen).
We're Combining the Next Two Updates Into a Huge Mega-Update!
Sneak Peek
With this new update comes a cool new feature called the Cookbook. Available after playing Blossom Square in the New Beginnings chapter, the Cookbook is a handy way to check all of your progress in the entire game- you can view your sticker and holo-foil stickers as well as your Blitz medals and Cooking School grades!
This next update will effectively more than double the content that's available in the game now- you'll be getting 24 new locations, over 30 new foods, several new chapters, nine new Blitz locations, tons more Cooking School challenges (29 in all), and the new Cookbook feature!
This update will bring the game to v0.95. After this update we'll be working on console versions as well as adding some additional features such as keyboard binding and full Steam Deck support for the 1.0 release, which we're aiming to release in the summer.
I'm so excited for everyone to finish the story- see y'all then!
-David
HUGE Major Update v0.50.05 Now Available!
Time for another huge new update for Cook Serve Forever! Thanks to everyone who left Steam reviews for the new redesign- it has helped us tremendously and we're immensely proud to have gone up to Very Positive for our recent review score! However now that 30 days have passed our recent review score has reset, so if you enjoy this month's update, please consider leaving a review if you haven't already! It helps us so much!
The next update is targeting early April- stay tuned for updates over on our Bluesky and Discord!
NEW CONTENT
- The next chapters of the story continue with "North Helianthus" and "Showtime"!
- Several new locations!
- Fifteen new foods (exclusively in North Helianthus): Angel Cupcake, Arroz a la Cubana, Devil Cupcake, Elephant Ear, Fried Rice, Hot Dog, Laksa, Lasagna, Miso Ramen, Poke Bowl, Poutine, Salchipapa, Soft Taco, Stuffed Mushrooms and Sweet Crepe!
- Three new Blitz Levels!
- New Mode: Cooking School with eight foods ready for grading!
- Added two new songs: Dive and You're Not Alone (exclusively in North Helianthus).
NEW ADDITIONS
- Added new window/full screen options: Borderless Full Screen, Full Screen, Windowed, and Borderless Window.
- Added resolution options.
- Added two keyboard layout options: Mirrored (default) and Cloned (which uses different keybindings for a closer version of the gamepad controls).
- Added an all new Order Tracker that shows how many orders you have left (and previous order ratings).
- Added some welcoming images for West and North Helianthus in New Beginnings (Eclair Apartments) and Blue War Memorial.
- After completing a shift you have the option to continue or restart the day.
CHANGES AND IMPROVEMENTS
- When coming back to the main menu the highlighted level now reflects your progress, rather that highlighting the first level of every chapter.
- Changed the way goals are displayed in-game for better clarity.
- Changed the song playlist for West Helianthus.
- Added specific UI sounds for Delicious/Good/Average/Bad orders.
- Changed some dialogue spacing for certain levels.
- Adjusted some UI elements.
- Added some variety to the After Hours establishing shots.
- The background TV in After Hours now changes with the dialogue.
- Adjusted the timer tutorial text panel for better clarity.
- Improved main menu asset preloading.
- Added a UI indicator for new submenu content.
- Added five extra seconds for bronze and silver medal times for the Community Garden Blitz level.
- The main tutorial now displays the chosen gamepad glyphs in the tutorial splashes.
BUG FIXES
- Fixed an issue with Grill prep that would sometimes cause inaccurate "missed" inputs.
- Fixed an issue where choosing an After Hours segment in the Main Menu during game progression could potentially cause you to skip ahead a few levels.
- Fixed/removed the ability to view the After Hours submenu before unlocking it.
- Improved the handling of levels transitioning to After Hours levels (the potential for a glitch could occur, but as far as I can tell it never did glitch).
- Game now returns to After Hours submenu when returning from an After Hours segment you selected.
- Fixed issue where keyboard commands could go through when the user tabbed out of the game.
- Fixed some audio corruption issues.
- Fixed the wrong ingredient being displayed for avocado for the Taco Salad.
- Fixed text to reset to "Start Cookin'" after save file deletion.
Update 0.25.06 Now Available
This update targets a lot of critical components, with more on the way for the next major update. Please let us know over in the Discord if you have any issues, and you can always roll back to the previous update from last week should you need to. Thanks so much!
STEAM DECK UPDATE
- Currently to play the game on Steam Deck you will need to force "Proton Experimental" compatibility in the game's Properties settings in Steam.
- Game Maker has confirmed to us that this issue will be fixed in a Game Maker update, which will remove the requirement to force this setting.
NEW ADDITIONS/CHANGES
- Greatly enhanced input detection- you should be able to speed through preps without missed inputs on both gamepad and keyboard!
- Video files updated, which should help with choppy performance on certain setups and Steam Deck. This is a temporary fix and a more thorough fix is coming in a future update.
- Rumble support added.
- Steam screenshot functionality added.
- Updated links to Discord.
- Service bell sound added to serving orders.
- Minor UI improvements.
MASSIVE CSF Update is Now Available!
I'm excited to announce that the brand new redesign for CSF is available right now! For all the details on what's new, be sure to check out our previous post on all the new dynamics and features: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1928090/view/4540283856248373551
There's so much new stuff and I'm so proud of our team for getting to the finish line on releasing this all new game, but we're not done yet! We have some exciting updates in the coming months that will finish up the entire game. Here's a look at our brand new roadmap:
All dates are subject to change, but we feel like we have a strong foundation to build off on at this point. But I'm eager to hear all of your feedback on this game! I want to make it even better before v1.0, so be sure to leave some comments either on Steam or over on our Discord, or message me over on Bluesky!
From all of us on the CSF team, thank you and enjoy the game!
-David
CSF Update Announcement
Hi everyone. David Galindo here, creative lead/programmer on CSF, and I have some news to share regarding the upcoming update we had planned for this week.
Y'all know I'm always trying to be as transparent as possible with every aspect of game development, and this blog post wasn't easy to write as it deals with some personal life stuff that I'm not all that eager to share, but thought it was important in the context of what is now going to be a delay for this update.
Towards the end of November before Thanksgiving we had a family member suddenly get sick and admitted to the hospital. The doctors were telling us that there was a road to recovery and we felt generally positive about his stay. I spent Thanksgiving in a hospital room with him, unaware that it was going to be my last time I was going to spend with them.
He passed away this month, somewhat suddenly and unexpectedly. We recently had the funeral and while I've been trying my best to not let this affect my work and game dev, it has all but been impossible over the last week, especially with the holidays being so soon. It's been extremely rough y'all, as you can imagine.
I'm so thankful for family and friends for this difficult time but the unfortunate side effect of me being back in the programming role is major setbacks like this that have me miss self-imposed deadlines. I so wanted to get this update out before the Steam sale, but at the same time I absolutely do not want another botched launch. Y'all deserve better than that.
I am going to be working hard on the update every day until it's ready to go. I simply ran out of time for releasing it this Weds. with everything that was going on in my life. I'm so frustrated with myself because we are so close to finishing. It's a beautiful game and EONS above what we have released right now, and I'm so excited for y'all to see it.
Thank y'all so much for your understanding and please feel free to reach out on our Discord if you have any more questions, I'm always in there ready to answer. Take care and I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday. Much love,
-David
CSF December Progress Update!
Hey Chefs! I’m Ryan Matejka (Bluesky | Instagram | Substack), Co-Writer of Cook Serve Forever. As David recently announced, you won’t have to wait much longer to experience the full game and story of Cook Serve Forever in all its redesigned beauty! That’s awesome for everyone, including me, because I started work on the story with Co-Writer Nicholas Kraak all the way back in 2021 and I am dying to talk to everyone about it.
One of my favorite things about peeking behind the scenes at any work of art is learning just how different everything could have been – Back to the Future could have used a refrigerator and nuclear explosion to travel through time instead of a DeLorian, Homer Simpson could have secretly been Krusty the Clown, and Bioshock Infinite could have delivered on the conflicting promises of its first trailers.
So I’m going to share with you two of the biggest things that could have been different about the story in Cook Serve Forever, why they were considered, and why they ultimately ended up on the cutting room floor.
Nori and Brie Almost Weren’t Partners
Nori and Brie’s relationship and playful banter are a huge part of Cook Serve Forever, contributing to the tone of the game and providing an emotional anchor for players as the story unfolds. However, early story outlines gave them a completely different dynamic.
Once we determined that Cook Serve Forever would have a voiced protagonist, we knew they’d need someone to talk to. We made a list of the traits this person would need to have both from a gameplay perspective (they should cheer the player on like Whisk does in Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!) and from a storytelling perspective (they should balance out Nori’s personality). The character we created from this list, and her relationship with Nori, was very different from what appears in the final game.
Initial story outlines featured a Nori who lived by herself in Moraine on the edge of the law. She would have worked at a SubSolutions food cart but gotten fired, then stolen the food cart and high-tailed it to Helianthus to become the best chef. There, she would have met an older and more laid-back woman named Brie – whereas Nori would be driven by ambition, this old, wise Brie would have no long-term goals and instead live in the moment, seizing opportunities and collecting experiences as they present themselves to her. Naturally, Lone Wanderer Brie would have seen Nori struggling with the food cart and offered to help. Lone Wanderer Brie would become a sort of big sister to Nori, imparting wisdom and guidance, and at the end of the game, Lone Wanderer Brie would walk off into the sunset in search of her next experience.
There are at least a dozen good reasons that we weren’t happy with this approach, many of which are probably obvious. One of the biggest problems with this version of Nori and Brie was that their connection didn’t feel very strong, which simply wasn’t very compelling. Furthermore, it would have been unnecessarily difficult to balance a story about Nori trying to be the best with a simultaneous story about her meeting and befriending a new person. It just became too complex.
Cook Serve Forever is supposed to be a feel-good game about cooking, and we decided that making Nori and Brie long-term partners from the start (and changing a bunch of other things about them) was the best way to reach that goal.
The Plot Almost Focused on a Recipe Book
Nori’s goal in Cook Serve Forever is the same as the player’s goal in the Cook, Serve, Delicious! Trilogy – she wants to achieve culinary greatness. After all, that worked for the previous games so why waste time trying to fix something that isn’t broken? Well, we were tired of doing the same thing over and over again, so we tried to fix it anyway by exploring alternate possible plotlines and character goals in the initial story pitches for Cook Serve Forever.
Once it was decided that the story would be more important in Cook Serve Forever than in our previous games, we were eager to take the narrative in a direction that wasn’t possible in the Cook, Serve, Delicious! series. We tried to think of every possible story that would make sense in a cooking game that didn’t involve the protagonist working their way up to winning a cooking competition – for example, we pitched the idea that Nori’s goal would be simply to get a spot at the local farmer’s market, or that she was drowning in debt and was trying to pay it off while on the run from a debt collector. None of these ideas lingered for very long, but there was one that felt like it was worth serious consideration.
We had already solidified the idea of the game starting with young Nori as a child living with her mom and then skipping ahead to Nori as an adult after her mother passed away. From there, we thought it would be cool for Nori to uncover her mother's handmade recipe book and take it with her to Helianthus, where she would be determined to make a living as a food cart chef while trying to learn and perfect all her mother's recipes. In the purest version of this idea, the player's sense of progress would come from slowly making their way through the recipe book and Nori's food cart would grow more famous with each recipe she learned. This fame would have naturally led her into cool opportunities as well as gotten her mixed up with some unsavory characters willing to steal the recipe book to further their own agendas.
While we liked the idea of the recipe book being a tool Nori could use to reconnect with her mother, we didn't like the implication that her (and the player's) success and skill were owed entirely to following someone else's recipes. We also ran into complications trying to figure out how the events of a plot centered around learning recipes from a book could be handled exclusively through food cart cooking gameplay – the story just didn’t align perfectly with the gameplay.
In the end, however, the scrapped recipe book-focused storyline proved to be a valuable step in the right direction. Without spoiling anything, it gave us a clearer idea of the type of character Nori needed to be, why she wanted so badly to be the best chef, and what the emotional core of the story was.
One of the most important parts of the writing process, whether during the earliest brainstorming session or while writing the final draft, is experimenting with different ideas. In our writing meetings, we held firm to the belief that there is no such thing as a bad idea. Sure, an idea might seem bad on the surface, but it can still give you a clearer picture of what a good idea might be, or some part of it may be worth using even if the whole of it doesn’t feel right. It is only by fearlessly exploring every inch of an idea that you can find out if it holds up to scrutiny or breaks under pressure. While the above ideas (and so many others I cannot talk about without spoilers) were interesting, we eventually moved on to ideas that we felt shaped a more compelling story full of humor, thrills, and heart.
I’m eager to find out if you agree!