Minato Shokudo: Mirage of the Great Clam

A cozy Japanese cooking game where you play a ghost with a diner to run and no sense of taste. So you cook everything by the book. Then you row the food across the harbor while it's hot. All 50 dishes come with a real recipe to try at home. One foggy night, the lighthouse goes dark.

You run a diner on a small island in the harbor. You're also a ghost. Ghosts can't taste, which is kind of a problem when you're the cook, so the recipe is all you have to go on. Scale and fillet the fish, and pull the kombu out right before the water boils. Then the meal goes into an okamochi, a carrier box with a handle on top, and you row it over to someone's door.

Deliver it while it's still steaming

Miso soup spills, so row gently. Fried fish goes cold, so hurry. Rain cools food faster. The boat radio plays Minato FM.

The fish comes apart where your knife goes in

Nothing snaps to a preset size. Cut one slice thick and the next one thin, and that's how they stay. In the fryer, it's done when the bubbles die down and the sound turns light and crackly. When you finish, you get stars for your handiwork and a one-line note on where you fell just short. Once you know the steps, turn off the apprentice guide and cook from memory.

A recipe for every dish

Each of the 50 dishes has its own recipe page with a shopping list and the amounts you'll need. I wanted you to be able to make the same thing in your own kitchen.

Run the diner

Take orders and keep several dishes going at once. Nobody walks out if you're slow. The tea in their cup goes down, and so does the tip. Once word gets around, regulars start coming in. On the third visit, a regular tells you how they like it: "Pack my rice balls firm, please." From then on it's just "The usual," and remembering is on you. Get it right and they tip extra.

Later the phone starts ringing with delivery orders, and whatever's on the stove keeps cooking while you're out on the boat. Some customers are in a hurry and some come in as a party of three, so it pays to prep in the morning.

Grow herbs out back

Behind the diner you grow scallions in pots, along with shiso and mitsuba, two leafy herbs common in Japanese cooking. Water them and pick the leaves when they're ready. If you forget, they wilt and wait for you. Use them as a garnish for a bigger tip, or sell them at the fish market. Some of the people you deliver to will give you seedlings.

The shipwright's old trike

Save up and the old shipwright will sell you his beat-up trike, a three-wheeled mini truck. Drift it around the east side of town. A broken bridge and two rockslides block the roads beyond. Pay the shipwright to fix them, or work it off with deliveries to the shipyard. Once the Momiji Bridge is rebuilt, the bamboo path takes you up to the overlook above the bay. At the workshop you can bolt on a headlight or a canopy for the rain. Seat boards let you give rides to people waving from the roadside.

Autumn foraging

Step off the boat or the trike and you can walk anywhere the trike can go. Ginkgo nuts drop under the big tree by the Momiji Bridge, and on the bamboo path you shake mukago, tiny yam bulbils, off the vines. The shiitake logs behind the fence belong to the schoolteacher, who says you can take "just what came up this morning." What you gather goes into some of the dishes, and the people you deliver them to will notice. Three of the neighbors will ask you for some, one at a time, and an empty basket by the door tells you who. They pay you back in things instead of cash, like a kid's drawing of your diner to hang at the entrance.

Couch co-op

Two players can share one PC. In the kitchen the screen splits down the middle, with one player on the mouse and the other on a gamepad. One of you fillets the fish while the other chops the garnish. On deliveries, one rows and the other keeps the carrier level and the soup in the bowl. Running the diner works with two as well. You can play everything solo, too.