SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure is a cooking-combat co-op adventure where two players play as an ambitious chef-hunter duo out to find the secrets of the Makanomicon! Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure Review Overview
What is SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure?
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure is a co-op cooking-combat adventure where two best friends and culinary extraordinaires, Som and Gon, open a travelling food truck in the abandoned island of Khaya after a mystical recipe book called the Makanomicon leads them there. New recipes, new ingredients, and adventure await the duo, as well as the hidden secrets of why Khaya Island has become desolate and dangerous.
Developed by Singapore-based indie studio kopiforge and published by Isolated Games Publishing and IndieArk, SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure introduces players to the world of Southeast Asian cuisine, featuring dishes from several countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Laos, and more.
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure features:
⚫︎ Over 40 Southeast Asian Recipes to Discover
⚫︎ Hack-n’-slash Combat
⚫︎ Dynamic Split Screen
⚫︎ Engaging Gameplay
⚫︎ Charming Visuals
⚫︎ Pineapple Turtles!
| Digital Storefronts | |
|---|---|
 Steam |
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| $14.99 | |
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Engaging Cooking-Combat Gameplay Charming Visuals Tons of Southeast Asian Dishes To Discover |
Some Mechanics Have Unclear to No Instructions Minor Bugs and Glitches |
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure Overall Score - 82/100
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure is a wonderful and whimsical co-op title that blends together cooking mini-games with hack-n-slash combat while running a travelling food truck to make for an engaging game for two or one. While there are some unclear mechanics and rogue glitches that come out, it’s still a joy to play. If you like games like Overcooked, SEDAP might just be the next game for you and your player two to finish.
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure Story - 8/10
Two friends going on a culinary adventure in a mysterious island with a dark past just waiting to be uncovered—it’s nothing special in terms of how stories usually go, but it has its own appeal especially with the evident presence of Southeast Asian culture, a culture that admittedly does not get a lot of spotlight in mainstream gaming. Som and Gon are very lovable characters that complement each other well, and their motivation for the sake of culinary greatness shines through in the story.
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure Gameplay - 9/10
SEDAP’s gameplay is its main selling point, with engaging cooking-combat gameplay that has you (and a player two, if you have one) constantly on your toes. From whipping up dishes in time to hunting your own ingredients, it’s fun and fast-paced. Controls are smooth with no input lags and are pretty straightforward and easy to follow. However, some mechanics are not explained properly during or even after its introduction, which can be confusing.
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure Visuals - 8/10
SEDAP is visually stunning, although not in a realistic way, but the amount of detail put into the game is evident. Character and enemy designs are unique and distinct from one another, and all of the visuals—from the characters, monsters, and environments—are pleasing to the eyes. In my playthrough, the game runs very smoothly as well even on the highest settings with no frame drops, lending itself to a more cohesive and optimized experience.
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure Audio - 7/10
Audio-wise, the game handles that department quite well, despite not having a wide variety. Individual levels within the same area (except the boss level) have the exact same track playing, but it’s catchy anyway. While there is no voice acting aside from the usual grunts and exclamations, it doesn’t take away from the overall experience, and lets you immerse into the background music. The camp background track is great as well, just letting you take in the sounds of nature—after all, you’re on a deserted island.
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure Value for Money - 9/10
For $15 a piece (double the price for online co-op, as both players need a copy of the game to function), it’s well-worth the money for the enjoyable content to go through. If you can get your player two to come over for an afternoon to play as well for the local co-op, then you’re very much getting an even better deal for two.
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure Review: Cook and Slay
Overcooked cemented itself in gaming as a classic party game that hilariously could make or break your relationship with a friend, a family member, or your partner. Its fun and entertaining mechanics of whipping up orders on a pressuring time limit with your player twos and threes has inspired quite a number of other games in the silly and cozy multiplayer genre, even without needing to be about cooking—there’s cooking-adjacent games like PlateUp! and Party Club, but there’s also Moving Out and Totally Reliable Delivery Service, among others.
I have experience playing all these adrenaline-pumping multiplayer games, especially Overcooked. Luckily enough I have not lost a friend yet to the sheer frustration of a lost order, but I may have ruffled some feathers along the way. Nevertheless, with my ragtag crew of misfits (myself included), we got to finish Overcooked from start to finish—not perfect, but any more and maybe we’d actually be committing mass murder around here.
And now, I am in search of the next game to conquer…and SEDAP just seemed right up my alley. Its Steam description says it’s a "co-op cooking-combat adventure," which immediately made me look twice. What do you mean cooking…and combat? And co-op? So I have to fight my scrumptious dishes first before serving? (I was right. Kinda.) Of course, being in the same genre of cartoon-y cooking co-op, it can’t help but be compared to Overcooked. However, SEDAP manages to give itself a proper identity and with extra out-of-kitchen mechanics that makes it just as much, if not more, engaging and enjoyable to play.
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure (will then be referred to from here on out as simply SEDAP) puts players in the shoes of two close-knit friends, Som the Cook and Gon the Hunter. One day while strolling down the beach, Som laments to Gon about how their family restaurant isn’t doing so well on account of customers complaining that their food is boring and bland. There’s tons of other restaurants doing the same thing—what can make them stand out? New recipes, and new ingredients, that’s what! The next question is…where to get these new ideas?
Luckily for them, Gon spots a strange recipe book washing up on the shore a few steps away from them. After examining the contents, they find out that it’s called the Makanomicon (a really clever pun—makan is a Malay word meaning "to eat"), and is full of unique recipes that the people in their land may have never heard of. The thing is, to get all the ingredients they need for the dishes, they’d need to travel to a long abandoned and dangerous island called Khaya. With nothing but their travelling food truck in hand, the duo set sail for Khaya…and off to one fun culinary adventure!
Work Hard, Play Hard
SEDAP’s gameplay is incredibly engaging from the start of the level up to the last second, and with all the new recipes with different ingredients and quirks coming in at every stage, there’s always something new to create, and a lot to think about when playing.
Speaking from experience in two-player multiplayer, each player has their own role as denoted by their name. One player is Som the Chef, and the other is Gon the Hunter. There is a clear role specialization, both equally important in making this travelling food truck the best one it could be. Som handles all the culinary-adjacent tasks, with a higher cooking speed than Gon. However, he’s a glass cannon—great in the kitchen, but has the tendency to die out there in the wild because of his lower health and overall damage output.
This is where Gon shines—slow in the kitchen, but his hunting prowess is top-notch, with better weapons and a larger health bar to tank even the strongest of monsters. After all, your ingredients aren’t just ready and prepped for you at your kitchen station—you gotta go out and look for them! This is where the combat portion of the cooking-combat adventure comes in. Beware, some of them don’t take kindly to being turned into chopped meat and will put up a fight—a rather brutal one, sometimes…I have intense beef with the aggressive chicken.
Anyhow, this simple combat mechanic makes an already engaging game even more engaging. Teamwork is key here, and having your Som or Gon working with you is important, especially because you can’t just go on a hunting or harvesting spree for resources all willy-nilly either. Resource management is also a thing in this game! Harvested ingredients will quickly spoil when placed on a countertop, eliminating the tactic of doing really early prep work. This forces you to think efficiently and to work well with your partner, otherwise the order will fail. Communication is key, just like in a real relationship. (OOF.)
With that said, each map is unique in its layout, challenging you and your mind to always think and memorize new layouts. I appreciate that the game lets you have a look-over of the entire level before you begin so you know or at least have a general idea of where all the ingredients are. After all, time is a precious resource and every single second counts, and getting to shave off those few seconds of frantically searching for the places of every single ingredient really makes a difference.
Dynamic Split Screen
The dynamic split screen is a god-send—if you’ve played or at least know about how Split Fiction does that near the end of the game, it works exactly like that, and nearly as smooth too. One qualm I always had with other multiplayer games was that when it was in a far-away isometric view, I’d always somehow lose myself in the chaos of three other people dashing to and fro. The character I was looking at on the screen and who I thought I was controlling wasn’t actually me, sending me into a frenzy of panic and "What the hell am I doing!?" moments.
SEDAP’s seamless moving split screen effectively splits the game into two halves when your second player is too far away from you to share the same area. When they return, the split disappears nicely and it isn’t janky at all, thus not interfering with whatever you’re doing. Granted, SEDAP has only room for two, but this helped me tons because I'm able to focus on myself and only myself on screen without getting confused.
No Player Two, No Problem—Solid Singleplayer Mode
Have no friend or loved one to drag into playing with you? No problem! SEDAP features a singleplayer mode as well, which puts you in charge of both Som and Gon at the same time, not like in Overcooked where you move from player to player in different parts of the map. In SEDAP, you’re just either Som, or Gon, depending on the role you’re playing as.
What’s cool is that the game automatically changes characters for you depending on where you are on the map—if you’re in the kitchen whipping up dishes, you’re playing as Som. The moment you’re even one inch outside of the kitchen boundaries, you immediately switch into Gon so that you’re more prepared for hunting and gathering. It’s a seamless, smooth mechanic and takes out the need for that extra button press to be the right role, which I really appreciate.
Playing singleplayer in SEDAP isn’t superbly difficult, and the game made the objective score lower and timers slower when alone. It’s a game made for co-op, yes, but it doesn’t punish you at all and even makes some adjustments so you’re not tearing yourself apart trying to reach for the high scores.
New Dishes, New Knowledge
The wide variety of Southeast Asian dishes in this game made my mouth water every time a new recipe came out. From more popular dishes such as Chicken Adobo, Pad Thai, and Teh Tarik (not really a dish, but you get it), to ones that I’m hearing for the first time like Sambal Kangkong, Thom Khem, Gado Gado, and Ambuyat, every new recipe that comes is a treasure trove of information and knowledge.
Past the adrenaline-pumping and (enjoyably) pressuring gameplay, SEDAP is also a way to introduce Southeast Asian cuisine to a more worldwide audience, given to players in easy-to-digest bite sized pieces that may influence further research or better yet, for them to make it themselves! Not going to lie, a delicious Thom Khem sounds good right about now…braised pork? Eggs? Caramelized sugar?! Yes, please.
Some Actions Have Unclear Instructions
As great as the whole game is in general, it does have its caveats. Controls in SEDAP are pretty much straightforward, with a set of four buttons (or keys, if on keyboard) to play the game. The cooking mini-games are not difficult at all, with mechanics that just require you to press the Interact button when the moving dot is within the highlighted area. It’s simple, and is a QTE commonly found in other games hence there’s already some familiarity with it. Now, when you introduce a mechanic similar but still slightly different from that, it would really help to have some kind of pop-up or denotation that the mechanic has changed.
I encountered this issue when the Mango Salad recipe was introduced, where it was a dish to be made on the workbench. Previously, when using it to make other assembly-type recipes like Mango Sticky Rice or Teh Tarik, you automatically assumed that it’s the same as when cooking in the Wok—press the Interact button along the highlighted gauge. Easy enough. However, the game fails to mention that for Mango Salad, you’d need to HOLD the button as opposed to just giving it a tap. This was a little frustrating as there was no way you’d have figured out that you needed to hold the button—in fact, it took me like 5 restarts to see what was wrong.
Gathering tea and vegetables had clear instructions on how to harvest them, with the required buttons or joystick being shown right on the screen. I don’t see why the cooking techniques couldn’t have those too. There was also the lack of a proper tutorial when fishing for Prawns in the Lush Lagoon area. While the control action here was more evident (mashing the Interact button to stay within the blue area) and there was a quick help slide that popped out, it didn’t say exactly what you needed to do to get the Prawns.
Still Some Bugs and Glitches
As smooth as the overall gameplay experience is, it’s inevitable that some bugs may have seeped in through the cracks and were undetected. For instance, during the first boss level at the Jade Forest, I suddenly became unable to move while I was trying to fend off the Sago Worm enemies from destroying my Ambuyat dish. No matter how much I moved my joystick or pressed WASD on my keyboard, nothing was working. I frantically pressed everything I could as I watched the devil worm headbutt my dish to oblivion. Unfortunately, my dish was destroyed and I raged-quit to restart the level—from scratch.
I have absolutely no idea what may have caused the bug—is there such a thing as overdashing? Maybe some part of the controls lagged or froze up? I couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason aside from me trying to dash as much as I could to get to my Ambuyat pot. Nevertheless, it was rather frustrating as I had to redo the entire boss level from the beginning. Hopefully, future patches will be able to iron out these creases that sour an otherwise stellar game.
Is SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure Worth It?
Worth The (Kitchen) Mess, Doubly Worth It With A Player Two
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure provides a solid experience either in singleplayer or in two-player co-op. Controls are smooth and the gameplay is engaging, whether you’re Som frantically firing up the wok in the kitchen or Gon smacking away at monsters to get their precious ingredients. Another plus is being introduced to new knowledge while playing—admittedly, it was my first time to encounter a lot of the Southeast Asian dishes featured in the game, and it’s always nice to expand what I know about other cultures that may not usually be highlighted in the gaming industry.
Although I must say, the game is evidently tailored for a two-player experience, and is much better played that way. So grab the nearest friend or loved one and hop onto the travelling food truck—SEDAP is ready to give you one enjoyable culinary journey.
| Digital Storefronts | |
|---|---|
| Steam |
|
| $14.99 | |
SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure FAQ
What platform is SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure in?
As of writing, SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure is only available to play on PC via Steam. However, developer kopiforge has stated that they are looking into console releases as well, and are aiming for a Q3 2025 release for the Nintendo Switch so far.
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SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure Product Information
 |
|
| Title | SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure |
|---|---|
| Release Date | Date |
| Developer | kopiforge |
| Publisher | Isolated Games Publishing, IndieArk |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam) |
| Genre | Action, Adventure, Indie, Multiplayer |
| Number of Players | 1-2 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | SEDAP! A Culinary Adventure Official Website |
