Cook, Serve, Delicious 3?! has entered Early Access on Steam! How are y'all liking it?

A couple of days ago, the third installment of the Cook, Serve, Delicious franchise has released on Steam but as an early access game. The game is also taking a different direction from the past games where instead of managing a restaurant or multiple restaurants, you are cooking for a food truck and are traveling to different routes to serve a customizable menu of yummy food to different people. Of course this game was already shown off on GB before in a Unfinished video with David Galindo (or chubigans as this twitter handle) showing the game off to Abby and Dan. I've played the game myself as I haven't played a Cook, Serve, Delicious game before, but I'm finding the game rather addicting and doing what I can to press the right buttons to have the proper orders ready to serve. Not gonna lie serve food using the space bar gets some getting used to such as Croque Monsuir sandwiches and Waffle Cone Ice Cream, but also remember I'm a total rookie to the series. Wonder if anyone else has played this on Steam yet? Its currently 10% off of Steam at $13.49 at the moment. And in case you haven't seen the unfinished video, here it is:

As someone that was a huge fan of the first CSD and found CSD2 extremely disappointing, this new game feels like a return to form. It still doesn't quite capture the magic of the first, but it's a huge improvement over CSD2 and addresses to at least some extent most of my big sticking points with that game.

My biggest problem with CSD2 was that it essentially threw all of the "tycoon-like" management sim stuff from the first game out the window. That issue, combined with mixed feelings on the holding station mechanic, really turned me off. CSD3 addresses both of those issues by having a more meaningful core progression and introducing the single keypress to have your robot sous-chef deliver all ready orders.

Overall, it's a great game and certainly worth $15, especially with more content and updates down the road.

One word of warning to anyone new to CSD, this game throws a lot at you and ramps up very quickly - too quickly in my opinion. If you've never played this series, it might be worth considering initially buying the first game (it's on sale for about $3 right now) and then jumping into CSD3 once it has its claws in you.

@chaser324: This is the review I came to see! I'm definitely getting it since I found your thoughts on the last game to be very spot on. I love these games and another good one of these is what I'm looking for.

This game rules.

CSD2 was a game that I think is very good but also at the same time completely lacks the ability to get hooks into you the way the original did. It had no real progression and the structure just felt kinda slow and plodding despite the actual gameplay being as hectic as ever. It was really weird.

This one so far has hit the ground running and seems to have a ton of stuff in it for early access as well.

@chaser324: I was already on my way to buy, and you just made me pick up my pace.

I'd be curious: did you check out CSD2 post-launch at all? Cause I agree with everything you're saying, but there were some BIG OL' patches that I feel did a great job of adding a lot of the charm that was missing at launch. Still didn't quite grab that same sense of magic and progression the first did, but it helped.

@undeadpool: Yeah, CSD2 improved a lot over time. It's certainly not a bad game, but its initial launch and the shift from the first game really diminished my overall impression of it.

Really impressed with the gamepad controls. The imput is really smooth and you can easily glide button to button and really crank out a lot of recipes unless they require very specific ordering. It's been a great way to spice up the difficulty.