Goblin Sushi review - "Roguelike cooking fun!"

• Really fun upgrades
• Pay your landlord (OR THEY DIE!)
• Boss fights?!

I am a huge fan of cooking games and very much love them, so when I saw Goblin Sushi, I wanted to see exactly how a roguelike (which I am not the biggest fan of) would work in the genre. The layout for Goblin Sushi is that of most cooking games, but this does feel very unique.

Maybe that's due to the conveyor belt instead of being able to drag the items to the customers so that their orders are filled. Maybe that's due to the upgrades and needing to manage the upgrades, which stack on each other, changing exactly what you are doing. Either way, each run in Goblin Sushi starts the same; you have rice and seaweed. A rice cooker is used to refill your rice, and you can tap a tab to switch to store mode, where you can order more seaweed.

When you've added the right ingredients onto the mat to make a sushi roll, you can then tap to roll them, and they will start moving towards the customers based on the conveyor belt. If you fail to make a good roll, then it will turn into poop on a plate, which needs to be tapped on the conveyor belt instead of appearing in front of your landlord (customers don't seem to mind it). 

In the run, you will be crafting sushi, but as you do so, you will gain money and XP. When you have levelled up, from your XP, you will be given three options - one of which you need to pick. These are random each time; they could be new recipes, increased tip or customer patience, increased speed at restocking, increased price of specific recipes...there are actually tons of options.

Some of my favourites are to do with quicker restocking if two or more are restocking at the same time and quicker sushi rice being cooked, as I always need to be on top of this. 

Along with these upgrades, Goblin Sushi sometimes has customers who come trying to sell you stuff. There are a few different types of shop people: basic shop people that are just trying to sell loads of upgrades and recipes, but there is also a devil that wants to sell you curses. These are massive changes that often have a bit of a negative side, to be honest. There is also a trash character that can remove one of your previous upgrades for a price. You can just kick out these people (freeing up a seat) if you want. 

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Goblin Sushi does have a lot of plate management. You often want to leave dirty places on the table to make sure that the sushi you are creating for the end person actually makes it to the end person before they get angry. Angry, leaving customers will cause your star rating to go down, which decreases your tips for each order.

You will need to keep earning money, as you have a little bar at the side of the screen that shows how much your landlord will take from you when he appears. You will need to have that money to serve him, like sushi, which he then eats. The amount increases each time you pay him, adding more and more to the goal.

There are also boss fights in Goblin Sushi, where you need to take on a bunch of orders, often from a boss, and then you need to pay your landlord directly after, which is a bit of a timing faff. It's challenging, for sure, but a really fun one.

At the end of each of the runs, you do get a bunch of upgrades, of which you can pick three to start each run. These are things like how poop no longer makes your landlord upset, or your restaurant starting at 5 stars. These little boosts make the run much easier.

Goblin Sushi currently has just one world, but there is going to be an update this summer with even more content (of which I very much look forward to).