Welcome to Palo Pori, a snuggly, tranquil village, where the villagers love culinary treats of all flavours. In Beastro, you play as Panko, a talented young chef who assists in the running of Palo Pori’s local restaurant. But on the morning we meet this budding cook, Panko’s teacher and lead chef of the restaurant, Travers, has gone missing, and a strange visitor – a magical flame spirit by the name of Flambe – has arrived with an injury and a troubling message about danger brewing outside the village walls. It’s down to Panko and Flambe to work together to save their home in the only way they know how – by cooking of course!

The tastiest part of Beastro is the storyline – and the characters that accompany it. The player is welcomed into a one-of-a-kind universe of friendly creatures using wittily-named ingredients to rustle up magical food that can fight off evil monsters. What’s not to love? The spirits, caretakers and villagers you meet have all been well-shaped by the creators with their own unique and fully-formed personalities. For me, there was the potential to explore a little further into the world that had been created. But I was left wanting more, which is no bad thing.

Beastro throws many different play styles, like ingredients, into the pan. Each morning starts with an open-world venture around the lusciously vibrant village of Palo Pori, farming, chatting, fishing, and generally gathering ingredients. Next, you’re in the restaurant preparing food for your customers by completing a variety of enjoyable mini-games. Following this, you’re tasked with preparing a special magical meal for one of the caretakers before they head out of the village to fight monsters.

Here, you build them a flavour-balanced meal from your available ingredients – this will form your card deck for combat later. You then conclude the day with the caretaker retelling the story of their adventures with a quirky puppet-show. For this section, you take on the role of the caretaker to defeat the monsters in card-based combat using the deck you prepared for yourself in the restaurant earlier.

All in all, it seems like a lot of moving parts. But, in reality, the whole thing is very satisfying. The variety of playstyles combine beautifully, giving a fusion of gameplay flavours, each perfectly complimenting the next. The diverse range of activities for the player keeps things fresh and I found myself looking forward to the routine of each in-game day. Impressively, each of the separate gameplay elements perform to the same standard – each is individually well formed and engaging, with no single section letting the others down. A special mention must go to the the mini games that were equal parts entertaining and challenging – just when you feel you’ve got the hang of things, a new mechanic is added that spices things up again.

In Beastro, everything revolves around the enhancing and/or balancing of the five main flavour groups; sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami – and a cheeky sixth; spicy. The flavours are steeped into more than just the cooking – they’re used in combat, they define the regions to which the caretakers travel, and they characterise the monsters you fight. Even the personalities of the caretakers are defined by the flavour of the region they hail from. The full infusion of this flavour theme into every aspect of the game’s narrative and mechanics shows the amount of love and effort that must have gone into its creation. And it truly pays off, immersing the player into this taste-sensation of a universe.

Beastro is characterised by a wonderfully sumptuous use of colour. From the vibrant cartoon visuals of the buildings, creatures and ingredients found in Palo Pori village, to the playful and imaginative 2D artwork of the puppet-show combat sections, the imagery of this game is charming and appealing to the eye.

The combat section itself is fun and satisfying to play and has lots of personality. Though seemingly quite confusing during the initial tutorial, the base rules are refreshingly uncomplicated – particularly for a deck-building game. The aim is to match the flavour colour and strength of the enemy card with one of your own cards, or better yet, chop down the power of the enemy card with a balancing flavour card. On top of this, the caretakers, meals and ingredients you use can add bonus enhancements and abilities. Plus, you receive level-ups across the board the further you explore in the world, unlocking and upgrading things around the village. The upgrades can start to make later levels feel a little too easy to mash through, but overall, the combat is nicely achievable without too much pushback.

My only grumble was the introduction of new caretaker characters that superseded the previous ones. By a certain level in the game, I didn’t see any benefit to using the earliest caretaker character, Oyshi, whose attacks weren’t as powerful as those of the later caretakers. A tiny niggle perhaps – but it would have been nice to level up individual caretakers so that the player could take on the monsters with their favourite challenger.