PlateUp! is a rogue-lite restaurant management game where you must serve every customer that walks in without fail. If a customer gets too impatient, your entire restaurant is closed down. PlateUp! is wild and hilarious, and so much fun to play, even if you fail.
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Although the main goal is to reach day 15 and beyond, there is always time to have a lot of fun in this chaotic game. Whether you are running the restaurant on your own or have a team of four sharing the responsibility, here are a few things that everyone does at some point during a playthrough of PlateUp!
10Push Customers Around
In PlateUp!, your customers are vital to keeping the restaurant running, but they’re also impatient, impolite, and messy.These annoying NPCs are what stand in your way of success. What kind of customer walks into a restaurant and demands to be served within seconds? It’s ridiculous, so it quickly becomes tempting to try and annoy them right back.
During the early days of a run, it is pretty easy to mess around with the customers. You can block their path to their table or push them right off their seats. Nothing is gained from doing this, but it is always amusing to lightheartedly bully your customers without fear of a bad review. It helps you get immersed into the role of a disgruntled chef.
9Name Your Restaurant Something Silly
Besides the food, a classy, memorable name will alwayskeep customers returning to your restaurant. But, in PlateUp! you can ignore that advice and write anything you want. The game gives you a pun-based name by default, but you’ll likely be able to think of something even better. Everyone feels more attached to their restaurant after giving it a fun name, making the experience all the more memorable.
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In a multiplayer game, it can be fun to change the name secretly and see how long it takes for your friends to notice what you’ve called it. You can change the name at any point, so as your restaurant evolves, you can ensure it has a fitting name that’s up to date with any running jokes you all have.
8Cook The Incorrect Order
PlateUp! is a tense experience where you are juggling several plates. When you have multiple possible orders for customers to request, you will inevitably cook the wrong recipe or perhaps add a side dish that wasn’t necessary. This always leads to a frantic dash to make the correct order, often with just seconds to spare as the customer grows dangerously close to storming out.
The chance of cooking the wrong item gets increasingly more likely if you keep pickingmeal option cards. There’s even a card that lets customers change their orders at the last moment. It is all part of the challenge of PlateUp! but it means everyone will mess up at least once during a playthrough.
7Get Trapped In One Space In The Kitchen
When playing with theentire group of four,you’re able to easily store one of your friends away in the restaurant’s corner to focus on their task. You can even surround them in just one square space, so they’ll never need to move at all. It is always quite funny to have one person trapped in such a way, so most groups are bound to trap a chef at one point during the game.
Of course, it is a hazardous strategy. If the others get overwhelmed with their tasks, this trapped chef can do nothing but watch the chaos ensue, helpless to assist them.
6Serve A Customer Too Early
Eventually, as more and more customers visit the restaurant, many tables will be waiting for their meals. When this happens, keeping track of who sat down first can be tricky, so serving someone who hasn’t been waiting as long as another table is gutting. When this inevitably happens, you must frantically make a new meal before it’s too late.
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Another common mistake most will make is serving one customer at a table for two before the other customer’s meal is cooked. This is always rather dangerous, as a customer’s patience declines rapidly fast if someone else on their table has their food already. Moments like these make or break a run, socommunication is vital with your friendsto ensure this doesn’t happen often.
5Let The Restaurant Get Overwhelmed With Mess
The customers in PlateUp! are incredibly messy. No matter what they eat, there will be lots of mess on the ground once they leave. Since there is so much more to do, many people ignore these messes, focusing on other tasks, while the restaurant becomes a disgusting place to visit.
When playing with friends, perhaps someone will take the time to clean the floor, but the majority of people who areplaying PlateUp! solowill end up ignoring the mess on the ground, especially if they’ve set up the restaurant so that they never even need to leave the kitchen. The customers don’t seem to mind walking through the mess, so it is always relatively easy to ignore it for a while.
4Try To Automate Everything
No matter what type of restaurant you are running, a big part of the fun is attempting to automate as many processes as possible. Most people playing PlateUp! will try to streamline part of the cooking process.Every day, you’ll likely buy blueprints to make your life easier, such as purchasing loads of conveyer belts and mixers to prepare ingredients.
Besides reaching over time, constructing a fully automated kitchen is the dream goal that everyone strives to achieve. It’s a difficult mission, but finding small ways to make the restaurant more efficient is so satisfying.
3Call In Too Many Customers
If PlateUp! somehow isn’t stressful enough for you, or you want to annoy your fellow chefs, you can call customers at the booking desk. This gives you a bit of extra money but means that your customers will show up immediately rather than appearing gradually throughout the day. It is a risk-reward strategy that is always quite exciting to try.
In the early days of a run, it is relatively manageable and a great way to afford vital blueprints. Later on, it becomes perilous to call customers in, adding to the chaos and tension of a busy day. Still, it is a great way to mess with your friends.
2Hide The Decorations
An essential part of keeping the restaurant alive is giving it a lovely theme. Each theme gives you valuable benefits, such as increased table patience or reduced mess made by customers. Although some decorations require being within range of a table, most just need to be somewhere in the building to unlock their perks.
With this realization, most people will end up hiding these decorations out of sight from the customers. You need the floor space to sit customers down and maneuver around them, so keeping these decorative obstacles out of the way is much more important than making the restaurant look nice. Having a grand statue or a lovely fireplace hidden away from everyone is quite amusing, yet it still makes the restaurant seem fancy.
1Burn Down The Restaurant
A big reason why this cooking game is so greatis because of how terribly but hilariously wrong things can go if you are not careful. Burning dishes will always inevitably happen, but the risk of trouble increases when you add flammable equipment into the mix. Danger hobs, in particular, are very quick to set aflame. If you ignore it, the fire will spread to other kitchen areas too.
Having the restaurant go up in flames is undoubtedly a dramatic way for your latest run to finish, but it is memorable. Sometimes you might need to completely ignore the flames, running past the fire to serve a customer. Now, that shows dedication to good customer service.
