Sizzle & Stack Impressions
Sizzle & Stack is Stacklands meets Cook, Serve, Delicious
Sizzle & Stack. Arvis Games
Sizzle & Stack from Arvis Games has you single-handedly managing a restaurant that serves all kinds of cuisine. Things start simple, with diner-style dishes like omelettes and burgers that only require a pan and a knife, but it gets complex quickly as your menu expands to Italian fare and beyond. Gameplay is centered on card and time management. I played the beta version of this rapidly evolving game and am happy to see that the developer is already fixing things I found lacking. I think this is going to be a great game by its final release.
Everything is a card, from your ingredients to your cookware and appliances. Ingredients that combine will mix automatically on a timer if you stack them. If the recipe calls for using something like a pan, for example, you just put those items on the pan, and they’ll combine into a single card result and jump off the pan.
Sizzle & Stack. Arvis Games
Ingredients, recipes, cookware, and appliances are randomly pulled from card packs you buy. As you progress, you can buy more expensive packs with more exotic contents. The number of cards you can have in your kitchen is limited, unless you upgrade it or get cabinet or fridge cards to store things, so at the end of the day, you’re forced to sell off cards to get below the limit. Ingredients will also spoil, taking up precious space as garbage that you can only slowly get rid of using a trash can card; you don’t start with a trash can, annoyingly.
Things get more frantic as you buy extra pans, pots, etc., to cook more items at once. It becomes a fun juggling act, but I quickly found myself using the game’s pause function to more calmly organize my cards. I wish the customers’ orders were better balanced, because it gets a little too hectic when they can order anything you’ve made before. Perhaps that could be integrated into a management feature where you have to plan for future ingredient stock based on restaurant traffic and popular dishes, like a real eatery might.
Sizzle & Stack. Arvis Games
At the moment, the game’s presentation is a little too bare-bones. It sticks too closely to Stacklands’ look in everything from style to UI design, which I think does this game a disservice. Arvis Games should be bolder and find a look unique to their own game, while experimenting with UI designs that feel more organic to cooking.
I’m eager to see where Sizzle & Stack goes from here. It’s an interesting mix of two popular games that the developer hasn’t quite nailed yet, and I’ve seen at least one other card-based cooking game that’s hitting the market soon. Competition will be stiff.
Sizzle & Stack will be released soon on Steam. A demo is available now.
Played on: Steam Deck
