Brunch Club

Brunch Club is a party game about cooking under pressure, built by Foggy Box Games and published by Yogscast Games back in 2019. It’s the kind of game that sounds simple on paper (finish the recipe before the clock runs out) and turns into chaos the second another person is involved. The hook is that every level riffs on a movie premise, so you’re not just chopping vegetables, you’re dodging sniper fire or racing the seasons while you do it, and the whole thing is built around getting a group of people yelling at each other on a couch.

How it plays

The main mode drops you into timed levels where the goal is simply to get through the recipe before time expires, either alone or with friends working the same station. Miss a step or fumble an ingredient and the level resets outright, so there’s no coasting through on muscle memory once you’ve learned the pattern. Each stage borrows its central gimmick from the film it’s named after, which keeps the challenges varied rather than just being the same chopping-and-plating loop with a new coat of paint. Beyond the core levels, there’s a head-to-head mode where two players race or sabotage each other in short bursts, plus a handful of smaller side modes for when the main course gets too stressful. It supports local co-op and versus play on one keyboard or with controllers, and it’s built with online play-together tools in mind for groups who aren’t in the same room.

Who it’s for

This is squarely a couch-game for people who like party titles such as Overcooked, where communication breaks down faster than the food does. If you’ve got friends or family who enjoy that specific flavor of good-natured panic, chopping in the wrong order while someone yells “the toast, THE TOAST” at you, this fits right into that rotation. It’s much less interesting solo. The mechanics are clearly designed around delegation and coordination, so playing alone strips out most of what makes it fun and leaves you with a stricter time-attack exercise. If you’re after a deep single-player experience or something with narrative weight, this isn’t it.

Is it worth grabbing?

For what it is, a lighthearted, movie-themed cooking party game, it’s a reasonable pickup for your library, especially since it costs nothing to add. The real value shows up on game nights when you’ve got at least one other person willing to get frustrated with you over a burnt dish. Solo players will get less mileage out of it, since the core design leans so heavily on group chaos and the strange thrill of watching a teammate panic. If you already own a few party games in this genre, this one is worth having on standby as a change of pace rather than a replacement for your go-to.

Quick facts

Genre: Casual, Indie. Developer: Foggy Box Games. Publisher: Yogscast Games. Platform: PC (Steam). Released: August 29, 2019.