Co-op cooking sim Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! is free on PC

If you’re new to this series, you can still hop in

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! is this week’s free PC game on the Epic Games Store. If you like the idea of a cooking simulator you can play alone or with a partner, this one’s wild — it’s set on a roving food truck in the “radically-changed war-torn America of 2042.”

After years of not quite breaking into the Cook, Serve, Delicious! series, I recently gave the second game another try and had a much better time handling food orders with a co-op partner on the same couch. So much so, I also picked up the third game on sale, and am now looking forward to the next title from Vertigo Gaming, Cook Serve Forever.

Unlike Overcooked, this game isn’t about moving around stage hazards, and you’ll have far more control over the types of food you’ll serve on any given day. Instead of rushing around, you’ll sit still and use a bunch of different control inputs to successfully assemble meals — bit by bit, as fast as possible — exactly as the customers specify.

It’s overwhelming and stressful. But as you get familiar with the controls, there’s consistent logic and muscle memory to keep those orders flowing; you’ll be able to build burgers or fry up some chicken with ease. At a certain point, I can kind of stop thinking and just let my fingers do the work. It’s one of those try-to-reach-zen games.

That said, as one Steam reviewer put it, “I thought this was a cooking game not a stress management game.” There’s a reason I bounced off the series at first.

In some ways, I prefer its calmer, less zany predecessor, but Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! can absolutely be your first CSD game. The day-to-day format has improved over time.

You’ll have until August 18 to claim the game for free.

Rumbleverse is up next on the Epic Games Store

Next week’s freebie isn’t a full game — rather, the Epic Store will give out the Boom Boxer Content Pack for Rumbleverse, a just-launched brawler battle royale game from Iron Galaxy. It’s a free-to-play game, after all, so having the deal be a cosmetic pack (and a 120-minute “Fame booster”) makes sense. It’ll be claimable from August 18–25, 2022.