Usually, if I see that a game is based around cards, I ignore it. I don’t generally like deckbuilding and don’t like shuffling decks, followed by gameplay being predicated on what cards are dealt. But seeing a card game based around cooking? That piqued my interest. That being said, Abra-Cooking-Dabra (Abra-cook-dabra was right there and has the right amount of syllables, devs) didn’t need to be a card game, and it’s easier to just think about most of its aspects as icons and not cards themselves. Regardless, this is a very good cooking game that’s also shockingly overwhelming compared to its contemporaries.
Abra-Cooking-Dabra might seem like a calm, relaxing game, but it’s probably the most stressful cooking game I’ve ever played. It uses the basic cooking game formula, where you have customers show up and need to get them their food while on a timer. All the customers are Alice in Wonderland-themed, plus the Cheshire Cat is always by your side to swap unneeded cards for cash. What separates the game from others is that you don’t really have a stock of ingredients. You can save certain ingredients in your fridge between levels, and the game will often give you a few at the start of the level, but you’ll need to buy most things as needed.
This is where the card aspect comes into play. Your ingredients all need to be purchased with coins as part of card packs. You’ll need sauces, oils, and the like, in addition to vegetables, but there are usually half a dozen types per card pack. For instance, if you need to grow some potatoes, you’ll have to drag six coins onto the booster pack containing potato seed cards. If you don’t get any potato seeds, you’ll need to buy another pack. This means that every single time you go to buy ingredients, there’s a high chance you’ll need to waste time on opening packs that have nothing you need, only to have to sell them and try again. I don’t see what this adds to the game, honestly.
This has serious implications for Abra-Cooking-Dabra‘s game flow. You’ll have orders come in and then have to pause the timer (letting it run will likely mean running out of time for orders), look at recipes, buy booster packs until they give what you need, grow crops, and then try to simultaneously cook everything. All the while, the game’s play space becomes packed with tons of cards, and you’ll need to comb through the chaos to find and use what you need. I found it all to be often overwhelming. The game consistently grants you new tools after each level, so it constantly grows in complexity, too.
If you’re interested in this sort of cooking chaos, you’ll probably love the game, but it can be strangely punishing. Beyond the opening levels, levels can end up taking the better part of an hour due to all the pausing that’s necessary. Each normal level will grant you up to three stars (you’ll get all for serving every single customer), and you use these stars to buy more equipment cards (plates, ovens, etc). You’ll also get a special customer at the end if you get three stars, and this customer often orders dishes that require special ingredient cards that your previous customers gifted you.
Making even a single mistake in Abra-Cooking-Dabra can and will absolutely bork an entire level. Sometimes the recipes aren’t incredibly clear as to how you’re supposed to prepare an ingredient, or maybe you’ll get overwhelmed and slip up. I’ve had levels where I ran out of time on the very last customer, and an ingredient got prepped just a second or two too late because I accidentally sliced something I was supposed to grate, which means I had to redo the entire 40+ minute level from the start if I wanted that third star. I’d honestly describe this as more of a strategy game than anything else, as the amount of things you have to juggle at once is pretty wild.
There are little quirks to lots of aspects of cooking here. Many ingredients need to be boiled, but filling a pot with water is a multi-step process. You need to clean items between use (save for any plates or the like that customers have grossly licked clean), so filling a pot with water when an order comes in means dragging the dirty pot to the sink, cleaning it, then putting it back in the sink right away to fill it with water. Then you can put an item in and drag it to the stove to cook. When you need to boil multiple items at once, going back and forth cleaning the pots and filling them with water is a lot.
There are just so many steps for dishes in Abra-Cooking-Dabra that I found myself getting mentally exhausted during the game’s long levels. You’ll bust your ass preparing multiple complicated dishes, only to have another one show up right away. The game can be very challenging in this way, though, so if you’re into this, you’ll probably have a great time. Levels offer leeway if you don’t mind not getting all three stars, of course. If you slack and don’t do everything perfectly, you can just do badly and move on. But this isn’t the case for the game’s boss battles.
Bosses have a separate timer where they attack your cards routinely. For instance, the second boss has an attack that obscures what’s on a bunch of your cards, requiring you to hide the ones you’re using in the fridge or cupboard beforehand. If you don’t plan ahead like this, you’ll likely run out of time. For boss battles, you just lose, as you’re not allowed to make mistakes here. It’s a pretty big difference between the main levels and bosses, but if you’ve been trying to get three stars in every level, it won’t seem all that different.
Honestly, I could go on and on for hundreds of words detailing Abra-Cooking-Dabra‘s recipes, gameplay mechanics, and ins-and-outs, as the game is really that complex. The breadth of its mechanics is just damn impressive overall, even though the game stresses me out as much as it does. I do wish you could just buy ingredients as needed, and that it was easier to see what each booster pack has in it, as it just shows you tiny plant icons that can be hard to distinguish. If you want a tough, card-based cooking game, it’s hard to go wrong here. Just be prepared for some serious stress in the process.
Abra-Cooking-Dabra: Full of tough challenges and some incredibly complex cooking, Abra-Cooking-Dabra has a lot to offer despite some annoyances. – Andrew Farrell
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