Did you like the idea of Overcooked but wish it was more relaxed and methodical? Ever wanted to program robots to run a neon-drenched cyberpunk food dispensary? Neon Noodles may have been on PC for a while in one form or another, but I checked out the new console release. Where the automation genre is a little less saturated.
In a kind of Altered Carbon way, you are released from cryo-prison to perform some mandatory labour, with your memory wiped to make you more compliant. There’s an evil corporation and a mysterious hacker, and that’s already more story than I’d expect from a programming/automation game. It definitely feels like the game has something to say, but it comes across as somewhat surface-level. Failing to fully connect with the gameplay, and exposition is delivered via email.
Cooking in a Cyberpunk Future
You’ll be tasked with placing food and preparation stations on a grid and then staffing this kitchen with robots. Over the course of the game, you’ll get access to aerial drones and rail-riding bots that can be more efficient than the more humanoid workers. You’ll then “record” the actions you want your bots to perform.
There’s been a clear effort to adapt the controls from mouse and keyboard to controller, but it’ll still take some time to get used to. Handily, the interface does label each item with the corresponding controller button, so you won’t ever get too lost.
Synths, Sparks, and Style
Moving your ingredients around and watching them all come together to create the final dish is pretty satisfying. But there are certainly going to be different skill levels in how people choose to solve each problem. This is neatly highlighted by end-of-level histograms that rank you among your peers for space used, the length of one program loop, and the total number of steps taken to fulfill the order.
For instance, I’m well aware I could set a bot on a short loop that would accomplish a number of tasks. But I haven’t quite figured out how to put that into practice. So I’ll mostly have them do one task until the entire program loops back around and they can do it again. It’s enough to pass the mission, but it’s not pretty, and it’s far from efficient. There’s definitely space for players to write really tight programs with several things happening at once, if they’ve got the skills.
How Long is Neon Noodle?
There are plenty of levels with different recipes, but I didn’t really notice a shift in the look of the stages. Neon Noodles does throw new tools and challenges at you. Although the challenge mostly comes from increasingly complex recipes. I’d have liked to see some other constraints put on the player. Such as only using specific tiles or having parts of the grid locked or predetermined.
I did go back to optimise some of my earlier levels just for the trophies. It’s a shame there aren’t more challenges like those. And I wish I had the patience to optimise the later levels. It’s nice that you can copy your entire solution or part of a solution, into its own save slot. But I can’t help thinking a copy/paste or a multi-select would make the experience just that bit smoother.
Neon Noodles is a competent puzzler that helps scratch that automation itch, and who doesn’t love neon lights and ramen?
Platform: XBox, PC, PlayStation, Switch
Developer: Vivid Helix
Publisher: EastAsiaSoft
Played On: PS5
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