Caracal monstrous cooking
When you think of fantasy adventures you think of heroes wielding swords, using magic and fighting off creatures and numerous elements of evil. However, we never really think of the ones behind the scenes who help keep the fighters in good health, allowing them to be able to do what they do on a daily basis. That idea, is where Beastro differs from the rest.
Beastro is a roguelite deck builder where you play as a caracal chef named Panko who finds himself in an interesting situation. After finding their world's guardian spirit, Flambee, injured. He finds himself tasked with helping out to close the remnants around their world. And the only way he can do this is to feed the caretakers who go out on missions beyond the walls to complete this task.
This is not an easy task for Panko, so it takes him days to complete. Each day consists of three separate actions: gathering, cooking, then hearing about the adventure the caretaker took after they ate your meal and ventured beyond the walls. So like any good chef, let’s start out by sourcing ingredients for our meals.
At the start of each day, you go around town gathering ingredients and insects that you can find to make your meals, but that’s not the only way to get ingredients as farming crops can also gain you more ingredients. This is done by watering and planting seeds or taking care of the animals around town. There’s also a nice little spot for fishing down by the beach that you can use to try and gather some seafood to add to the dishes as well.
Once you have gathered everything you can it’s time to start cooking. To do this, first choose which meals you will serve to the citizens of your town. This is how you’ll gain the needed currency for upgrades and new seeds, so it’s important you’re putting a healthy variety of high value items on the menu to pocket a bit more coin in the process.
Once your citizens are fed it is time to feed the caretaker with a more specialized meal for the task at hand. Because with this meal, you actually build the deck that they use on their adventure to deal with the creatures they find beyond the walls. Knowing that you need to balance the flavours just right to be able to give your caretakers the most stamina to be able to fight off these creatures.
After you’ve created the meal and fed the caretaker, it’s time to close down the kitchen for the night. At this point, you can then go to the tea house to see how the adventure unfolded for the caretaker, but do take caution. There are some ingredients you can only gather at night so take another lap around town to see what you can find that you couldn’t find in the morning. This does include the fishing spot as there are different fish at night as well.
After your little night adventure around town, it’s time to head to the tea house to see how the adventure unfolded for the caretaker. This is done by a little puppet booth with cardboard cut outs used for both the caretaker and the creatures from their missions. This is where the actual turn base battle system/rogue-light system kicks in.
At the start of this, you first need to pick a path. There are multiple nodes on the path from new ingredients, wood, iron, and even stone. The goal is to get to the end of the path where there is either a boss or a mini boss to get to. Along the way you will also find minor fights, which is where you can get some interesting items from the monsters themselves if you play your cards right.
When you engage a monster, the battle system kicks in and this is where the deck you built while making your caretaker’s meal comes into play. At the start of each turn, the monster sets the flavour for the battle. You must either play a card that matches the flavour of the monster's card or find one that balances that card in order to halve the card value the monster played.
You can also choose to enhance the card you play by choosing another card that pairs with your current card. For example, bitter pairs well with umami, so if you’re playing a umami card and then enhance it with a bitter, the value increases by the bitters’ value. This is a good trick that can help you turn the tides of battle if you have the right cards.
There are also times where you will fight two monsters at once, and this brings up a problem. Each monster will be able to play a card while you can only play one. And this is when you need to think strategically, as the card you play will be played against both monster cards.
Note there will be times where you can’t fight both so you’ll need to pick the card that you think you can take the hit from. Also pay attention to the monster cards cause sometimes the card will hold a monster part on it. If you beat this card, you’ll get the monster part and be able to use it in new dishes back in the kitchen.
When the adventure comes to an end, you’ll get everything that the caretaker had gathered to use in upgrades or new dishes. You then get one more chance to gather any ingredients you might’ve missed before you head to your house and hit the hay. And hopefully with the new ingredients the next day you’ll be able to get further and be able to fully reach the remnant.
One of the major things besides just the gameplay that really made me fall in love with Beastro was the graphics. There’s a cheery atmosphere in the visuals and sound that makes me enjoy being in the world and interacting with everyone in it. This made me wanna keep playing and save it from the disaster as it made me feel like I was saving friends I have known for a while.
Plus, they were never really any big issues I had while playing Beastro. I never ran into a bug or major issue that made me wonder what was going on. The only problems I had were some of the difficulties learning new ingredients or fighting bosses, but those are just learning curves that I needed to figure out myself.
In all Beastro was a fun and fresh take on the deck builder/roguelite genre that I had the pleasure to play. From the engaging environment to the fun gameplay, I never once found myself wanting to stop until I got to the end. I would recommend anyone who likes this style of game to give it a try as it is one of the best I have played in a while, and, at the time of this writing, can also be enjoyed on Xbox Game Pass.
Developer - Timberline Studios. Publisher - Timberline Studios, Kepler Ghost. Released - June 11th, 2026. Available On - PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC. Rated - (E 10+) Fantasy Violence. Platform Reviewed - PC - Steam Review Access - Beastro was purchased by the reviewer for the purpose of this review.
Kelvin is a big fan of survival crafting, simulator, base management, and RPG's. From 7 Days to Die to Deep Rock Galactic. When not trying to survive the post apocalypse you will find me fighting in the field for democracy in Helldivers 2.