Automachef approaches the art of cooking like an engineer. It's a cooking puzzle game, though quite a bit different from its fellow Team17-published culinary experiment, Overcooked. To make all these salads and burgers, you'll need to build a manufacturing behemoth evocative of Factorio and Big Pharma, programming machines to do all the dirty work.
While you're plonking down machines and linking them together to conjure up a meal to tantalise the taste buds, you'll also have to keep an eye on your ingredients, watch energy consumption, make good use of limited space and try to stop things from catching on fire. You also need to tell all these machines what to do, using assembly code to give them commands.
It sounds like a lot of work to make some fast food, but it's good to see that humans still have a role, even in robotic kitchens. When kitchens learn to programme themselves, that's when we might as well just accept extinction.
Alongside the campaign, you'll be able to build a business in Contracts mode, and then there's the Test Site mode for when you just want to experiment. And if you create a particularly excellent production line, you'll be able to save it and plonk it down in another kitchen.
Frankly, I'm shocked to discover that there's more to a kitchen than a filthy microwave and many surfaces upon which I can place half-empty pizza boxes. I feel like a whole new world has opened up for me, and thankfully it's still one where I don't technically need to do any cooking myself. Perfect.
Automachef is due out in the summer.
