Collect the right ingredients to complete all of your recipes while taking action to slow down your fellow chefs. Does Cooked have the right ingredients to become a game night hit, or will it be a tabletop disaster? Let’s find out!

Game Name: Cooked (2025)
Publisher: Cooked Games
Player Count: 2-6 Players
Playing Time: 15-45 minutes
Review Date: 11/3/2025
Reviewed By: Dan

Upfront Disclaimer: The folks behind “Cooked” generously provided me with a pre-production copy of the game for purposes of testing it out and writing a preview/review. No compensation was provided and I am free to write whatever I want about the game. All opinions contained within are my own unbiased thoughts.

Game Overview:

When Tom, one of the co-creators of Cooked, reached out to me and offered to send me a pre-production copy of his game to playtest and review, I wasn’t really sure what to think. There are a lot of food-themed card/family games out there, and I had just gotten over reviewing some that I wasn’t super enamored with recently. Some recent entries have given me a bit of a stomach ache, and I wasn’t really excited to dive back into the genre anytime soon.

The game arrived to me promptly in a package straight from Australia, and I unboxed it and sat it in my pile of “to be reviewed” games…where it didn’t sit for very long. Once my 9-year-old’s eyes caught sight of the box, I got an immediate “Dad, we HAVE to play this one!”. And I can see why…the box is adorned with colorful, whacky artwork including a smiling bottle of milk, a ranch dressing container made to look like a cowboy, and even a carrot eating a slice of carrot cake with “I swear, it’s not what it looks like!” written next to it.

Although I am reviewing a pre-production copy that is subject to changing before the final printing, I was pleasantly surprised by what I received. The box is bright, colorful, and eye-catching. My board game shelf thanks the designers for keeping the box compact; it’s large enough to hold two stacks of cards inside with a small fold-out rulebook, and that’s it – no unnecessary shelf-clogging giant box that seems to be the trend as of late. There are a total of 127 cards inside – almost half of which are “ingredient” cards. They kept that fun whimsical feeling from the outside of the box going on these ingredient cards, by putting in the time and effort to make each and every single one of them completely unique. There are another 42 action cards in the box, many of which share the same name but the designers still put in the time to make the artwork different on nearly all of them. The rulebook folds out into a large single sheet, and carries over the same art style; but more importantly, it’s very well written with solid examples and creates absolutely no ambiguity. Within 3 minutes of glancing at the rules, I was ready to get started; this is exactly what you want from a family card game, especially when playing with younger kids.

The goal of the game is simple. Each player is dealt three recipes: an entree, a main dish, and a dessert. There are no points or other metrics to follow, the winner is simply the first player to complete all three of their own recipes. This is accomplished through a combination of collecting ingredient cards required to assemble each recipe, as well as playing action cards to either help yourself or sabotage other players. There are also some doomsday “kitchen disaster” cards;  you REALLY do not want to draw one of these. They are immediate, one-time events that will put you at a huge disadvantage in the game.

The brilliance of Cooked comes not only from just the creative artwork, but from its incorporation of so many great gameplay mechanics. For starters, they’ve avoided the normal ho-hum of generic set collection for completing recipes by adding in another layer of strategy – each time you complete a recipe, your allowable hand-size (or what the game refers to as your “pantry”) shrinks by one. So you start the game with a hand-size of 6, and you may want to jump out quickly to complete an easy three-ingredient entree or dessert, but that reduced pantry size afterwards will make completing your Main course far more difficult later on. But at the same time, you can’t just necessarily always save up and try to complete your Main course first either, because you may fall way behind by the time you do (whether by bad luck drawing new cards, or sabotage from other players). Cooked also has some action cards that allow you to play them whenever you want, even when it’s not your turn, giving you the chance to react quickly to what other players are doing and not necessarily have to wait all the way until your next turn to change your strategy. I really appreciate that Cooked not only offers up a great quick-to-play family game, but one that actually contains a host of clever mechanics to feel strategically interesting. That hasn’t been typical of the previous few food-related family card games I’ve tried.

I don’t have many gripes about Cooked, as I think it delivers not only exactly what I would expect, but even a little more on top; that being said, after a few plays I did leave with two different minor callouts. The first is, although this game can handle a player range of 2-6 people, personally I think it plays best at the 2-4 player count. Even though turn time is usually relatively quick, this game feels just a tad bit too long to me at the 5 (and definitely 6) player count. It actually takes a good bit of time to position your hand to complete recipes unless you start off with an extremely lucky deal, and at 5+ players, you’re probably looking at 40 minutes real-world playing time; that just feels like a bit much for me for what I typically look for in a game like this. My second slightly-more-specific gripe comes from one of the kitchen disaster cards in the deck in particular: the “Order Mix Up” card. There are exactly two of these in the deck, and they feel like an absurdly harsh penalty to me; I have a hard time seeing anyone winning this game who draws one of these cards after completing a recipe, just because it’s such a colossal set-back. This feels especially tough if you’re actually using this as a family game and playing with young kids, as it will likely result in a whole lot of tears if they happen to be the ones who draw it. Fortunately, it’s mitigated easily enough: I’d recommend just keeping these two cards out of the deck when playing with young kids, and you’ll be back to enjoying the game as intended.

Verdict:

Overall, Cooked definitely has the right combination of ingredients to be a family game night hit. With its quirky artwork and some cleverly designed mechanics to keep it strategically engaging, this one is a blast for kids AND adults.

Likes:

• Extremely quick to learn and teach; yet maintains multiple clever mechanics to keep it strategically interesting
• Fun, quirky artwork that is different for every single ingredient card
• Short turn time keeps players engaged

Dislikes:

• The “Order Mix Up” kitchen disaster card is too strong of a penalty; might frustrate younger players who don’t like “take that” mechanics in games
• Playing time feels too long at the 5-6 player count