I booted up Beastro expecting a cute little cooking sim, and I genuinely thought I’d accidentally launched a prestige Nintendo game.
This thing is polished. Like, suspiciously polished for a game where you’re also petting farm animals between cooking shifts. You’re running a town-to-table restaurant — grow your own produce, raise animals, gather ingredients, and serve up dishes to your village through these snappy chop-flip-sizzle minigames.
That part’s cozy-game 101. But here’s the twist: every dish you cook actually builds a card. Those cards go into your Caretaker’s deck, and once they’ve eaten, they head out to fight monsters — and you watch the whole battle play out as this cool-looking puppet theatre sequence.
And uh, the deckbuilding caught me off guard. I expected something light. Instead I was staring at my hand wondering if I’d built a deck or a disaster. There’s real depth here. Oh, and foodies, take note: the flavor wheel is an actual mechanic, so you can get your umami on.
Beastro is out right now on Steam and Xbox Game Pass. If you like your cozy games with a little bite, this one’s worth a look.
