From cosy tavernkeeping to adventurous cuisine, this year’s Gamescom had a lot of cool new Indie releases to showcase.

Delicious Dungeon by Digital Cauldron is a game where you have to dive into perilous dungeons to defeat enemies and acquire ingredients to serve food in your restaurant! It’s incredibly pretty and features a premise that is right up my alley, given how much I loved Recettear and Moonlighter!

Combat is really interesting with a system where you switch between a sword, hammer and spear almost seamlessly to create incredibly satisfying combos.

On top of that, there is also a Sekiro-esque posture system in place where damaging enemies will eventually make them vulnerable, opening them up to even more damage.

The artist of the game did a wonderful job, by the way, just as a side note, and we ended up talking a bunch about the game. The environments shown in the demo are beautiful, with serene melodies accompanying dreamy and colourful landscapes, as well as background art that is to die for.

The premise of the game is quite similar to that of Adventure Bar Story, Moonlighter and Recettear, as well as the more recently released Dave the Diver, and I’m a sucker for those kinds of games, honestly, so I’m obviously really looking forward to Delicious Dungeon which you can wishlist over here on Steam!

When I asked whether or not she’d be worried about people calling their game a copycat, the lead artist answered that it’s more interesting when devs try out a similar concept but with their own spin on it, similar to how Phasmophobia sparked a lot of cool “clones” that are very much unique in their own ways.

And frankly, I agree with that! I think that Delicious Dungeon is unique enough to stand out on its own, especially as combat appears to have a high skill ceiling. I’m not good enough just yet to beat the demo, after all, and I can’t wait to dive into the dungeon and open up my very own restaurant.

At the same time, I’m not entirely sure how likely it would be for anyone to make such claims about this game in particular.

We’ve had premises like that, a lot, and each and every game that features roguelike action as one part of the gameplay loop and some other more balanced and cosy section as the other part of the gameplay loop is very different.

Heck, Cult of the Lamb does it and nobody would dare claim that Dave the Diver ripped some ideas from that, or Moonlighter or Recettear, right?

But regardless of that, it was amazing to talk to the artist and one of the programmers of Digital Cauldron and to also play the game on Steam. I’m really excited for the release, and in my opinion, you should be, too!

This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well.