Hello, I’m Alastair, the creator of PlateUp. I love deep roguelike games, which you can play over and over, with a different experience every time. And I love playing co-op games with friends. But it was hard to find a game that had the depth I wanted but was approachable enough for everyone to enjoy. So I left my job and made PlateUp – a co-op roguelite restaurant game – to be the game I wanted to play. After the amazing support the game has seen on PC, with over 1.5 million players, I’m excited to bring the game to so many new players on Xbox with Game Pass.
You’ll need to build up your restaurant from scratch to make it in the cutthroat world of hospitality. Spend your earnings each day to buy new appliances, then arrange your restaurant to optimise your performance. You’ve got complete control of the layout. Can’t reach the sink easily? Pick it up and move it closer. Kitchen too small? Move some things into another room. Customers too far away? Cook in front of them – just try not to set their table on fire!
It’ll start simple. You’ve got one meal to serve. Your customers behave themselves.
But every three days, the heat turns up. You’ll be presented with a choice of two new random challenges and you (and your team) will have to decide what to take on. You might opt to add more to your menu; maybe adding a side, a starter or a dessert. Or you could increase the complexity of one of your existing dishes by adding a sauce or swapping an ingredient out for a home-made version. Alternatively, you can keep your menu simple and handle more – and fussier – customers. Maybe you’ll need to remember your customers’ orders, or maybe from now on they’ll all turn up at the same time?
I wanted PlateUp to be a game everyone could enjoy. There’s lots of depth, but you only need two buttons to interact with everything. You can join your friends mid-session, and it doesn’t matter if you’re not as experienced as them – everyone can contribute without getting in the way. It’s not a blame game, and there’s no shame in losing; it’s all part of the process! I made it a roguelite, so that every time you start a new run you’ll get new dishes to serve, new challenges to overcome, and new tools to overcome them with. Everything you face will be something you’ve chosen to take on. Never get stuck on your least favourite level again.
Replayability is a core part of PlateUp. It’s great to have games to play with friends, but it’s even better when everyone can keep enjoying them. Each run you play will be different, with everything from the layout of your restaurant to the appliances you can buy changing every time. It’ll be a fresh experience for everyone, experienced and new players alike.
And as you play, you’ll unlock more content, including challenging game modes, dishes, and bigger layouts. You’ll also get a reward when your restaurant closes, which you can bring along to a later attempt, helping you get started. The more you play, the closer you’ll get to building the restaurant of your dreams.
Since the game first launched on PC, I’ve grown the PlateUp team and we’ve been hard at work improving the game. Over the last year, we’ve added relaxed coffee shop and bakery modes (no dishes to clean!); we’ve also added Turbo, a fast-paced way to turn up the pressure and push the limits.