Gambling is a dark and scary addiction, kids, and you need to be careful when it comes to getting into bed with these games of chance and stakes. Sure, you might think you want to play Balatro, but do you really want to be glued to your device for hours at a time, praying for a Hanging Chad/Blueprint Joker combo to help you get past Gold Stake? By the same token, I found myself sucked into Raccoin to the point of considering playing the actual machines at arcades, but thankfully was held back by my lack of money. Gambling is certainly insidious, but at least most titles have taken on the form of familiar ideas. So when Don’t Let It Starve appeared in my Steam library, I had but one thought: “How the heck are we going to make lunchboxes addicting?” Turns out, easily, if sloppily.

What? It’s beef, it’s bread, it’s technically a burger! Gimme points!

Following in the footsteps of Clover Pit, Don’t Let It Starve has a dark, gross feeling about it wherein you wake up somewhere unknown, with a mysterious overseer demanding you to perform. In this case, the task is to make a bento for a multilimbed, shrouded creature who speaks in occasional French. Each round, your bento must perform higher and higher, with points obtained from filling the box, creating combinations and, as always, boosts from different items you can purchase from the shop. Figure out how to combine meats, grains and vegetables to craft a dish that will satisfy your patron for another round. Fail to meet his standards and he’ll decide that the perfect compliment to your disappointing dish is to consume the chef as well. But don’t worry: score high enough and the creature will hand over the key so you can escape. No strings attached…right?

Don’t Let It Starve lets you choose one of three bento sizes, each with its own benefits and weaknesses. You have to construct lunches for six rounds, getting a handful of chances each time to assemble a delectable meal. You’ll have one of three foods to choose from to put into the bento, with the choice to reroll a limited number of times to get different options. Any food that’s put into the box is final and unchangeable, so try and allocate space both at the moment and plan for future iterations. You can serve up the bento at any time, but it’s generally recommended to try and fill it completely to maximize your score and get combo points. You can also throw the thing away at any point if you’re disappointed or feeling defiant, and any number of factors can affect the overall score.

Me when I develop a fixation and won’t eat anything else for three weeks.

Building the bentos is the chief objective, so I spent a good amount of time getting familiar with this action. Frankly, there are too few food items to be used in the bento boxes, at least at first. You quickly discover that you need to play to strengths and weaknesses on how you want to construct things. The tiny bento, for example, is only a 3×3 box, which gives you a coin bonus but also inhibits your ability to put down certain food things, like bread or the t-bone shaped beef. The large bento actually costs an extra coin to use, but the 5×5 means a lot of space to get creative, though the odd number makes it harder to perfectly fill. I found the normal 4×4 to constantly be the best: a small coin bonus and a straightforward path to a fully packed lunch.

Don’t Let It Starve, like so many of these roguelike titles, relies a lot on dumb luck instead of skill at the beginning. While the toque (chef hat) that you start with gives you one additional bento per round, it gets really hard to make the quota starting about the fourth round. The charms that you unlock give you some really helpful bonuses, starting with simple things like “extra points per sausage” or “a 5.0 multiplier with a one in six chance of self-destructing.” But you generally need to stumble upon the best charms through persistence and happenstance. So players need to be ready to have several games turn sour in a big way before you finally get the opportunity to hit the final goal, escape, and then get a new toque and a new difficulty level.

Combos are the key to success, as you need to build a bento that gets as full as possible while also attaining some degree of semblance. While I was able to eventually stack my game to almost guarantee a block of rice each and every time (with some ballistic points as a result), I still had to be ready to figure out how to slot things like peppers, pickles and sausage once I ran out of rerolls. Bread and sausage gets you “hot dog,” rice and bread is “grains,” and three sausages touching in one bento is “death,” so do with that what you will. The achievements and combos to discover did give me some good chuckles, as the game has an element of (occasionally grim) humor throughout. If you can, do your best to pair chef bonuses and charms to maximize your points and potential.

Temaki was the freaking GOAT of my favorite run, no doubt.

 There are some fun mechanics that exist outside of the expected charms and between round bonuses. There’s a liquor shelf you can gradually fill, with the option to pour yourself a bracing shot of something to gain passive bonuses. You can only drink once, and be careful what you mix: too much of a good thing can potentially harm instead of help. There are little storytelling elements you can discover within the shockingly small room that gives you insight as to what is happening and what may happen in the future. And, because this game is grim and dark, there’s also a meat grinder. Sometimes you just need a little extra to help you get enough points for this bento, and the Good Lord helps those who help themselves, so go ahead and shove one (or two) arms into the grinder to get a point bonus. 

Like a lot of these gambling roguelikes, it’s a heavy start in terms of getting your bearings, but the additional toques and understandings of the weighted odds will help you succeed in a bigger way. For example, I really benefited from unlocking the toque that gave me four extra food rerolls, but the toque that balanced the multipliers and the base points wasn’t as strong for the playstyle and buildout I went with. Having said that, I could still get to the fifth plating without any real issues, so the additional hats add the variety and variable approaches to make it quite attainable as long as you understand the core gameplay loops. If your only target is to clear all the toques on the lowest difficulty level, you’ll be able to pull this off in a couple of hours, maybe less with some good rolls.

It’s just like Chilis: weirdly plated food, unfair time expectations, and guests who will murder the waiter if they don’t get appetizers fast enough.

However, once Don’t Let It Starve begins incorporating more and more of the difficulty crunches, the loop can get exhausting, particularly if you don’t have directionality in the beginning.  By the time you hit three stars, if you don’t get on the path you want to follow from the beginning (I almost always lean towards rice and bread), then you’re screwed. Getting 1000 points is nothing on lower stars, but the time restraint, coupled with additional inhibitors, can severely cramp any hope of higher achievement. It got to the point where I could tell, from the first shop offering and my first bento, how early I was going to end up losing the run. It honestly took some of the fun out of the game once it shifted from “devilish puzzle planning” to “theoretical lunchbox calculus.” But I’m also not a math person, so take that as you will.

The atmosphere and design of Don’t Let It Starve is phenomenal. The dank room, coupled with the omnipresence of the insane chef and the occasional, haunting accordion music is chilling and exciting. More than once I got a good jump scare from turning around and realizing the chef had left its crawlspace and attempted to consume me, even if it was just a joke. If you’re lucky enough to find the blacklight and discover the secrets strewn about the room, it adds a hellish dimension to where you are and what you’re doing that compels you to understand the storyline better. There’s something almost cosmically horrifying happening, and you need to cook for your life (and death) if you hope to discover the truth.

…can I get a pen and paper real quick?

Don’t Let It Starve is a roguelike buffet of skill, chance and ghoulishly grand odds. It’s simple to understand, satisfying to accomplish, and truly challenging to succeed in. While there are moments of frustration and annoyance with bad loadouts, the game resets quickly enough, and there’s so much potential for how far players can go with truly masterful craftsmanship. I honestly put way more time into this than I would have thought, given that I’m a terrible cook. But perhaps that’s the lure, isn’t it? To know what it’s like to plate something delicious and make someone happy. Someone who will positively, 100% murder and devour you if you can’t make them happy. And isn’t that what we’re all dreaming of?

Don’t Let It Starve is available now on Steam.

Reviewed on PC.

A copy of Don’t Let It Starve was provided by the publisher.