Shikabanegurai no Boukenmeshi is a Dungeon Survival and Cooking RPG

Nippon Ichi Software announced its latest in-development game, titled Shikabanegurai no Boukenmeshi. The title translates roughly to “Deadly Adventure Meals” (with an added pun about eating corpses). The “Survival Simulation RPG” will emphasize cooking as a key feature. Based on the official website and information from the 2021 Tokyo Game Show, Boukenmeshi begins with a party of adventurers trapped deep within a dungeon. Deprived of food and water and doomed to die of starvation, the adventurers come upon the corpse of a monster. They decide to eat it in desperation. Luckily enough, the monster turns out to be edible. This leads the adventurers on a new path forward: to kill, cook, and eat the dungeon’s wildlife for sustenance as they make their way along. Nippon Ichi also uploaded a teaser trailer.

  Boukenmeshi features character designs from Takehito Harada. Harada is character designer for the Disgaea franchise, as well as Labyrinth of Refrain and The Witch and the Hundred Knights. Players will gather food and materials from the dungeon as they go, cooking new, weird, and delicious dishes to improve their stats and grow stronger. The game will incorporate a character generation feature, and involve a party of four characters. Various jobs are available to the party. These include Swordsman, Cook (who can improve the quality and diversity of rations), and even the “Unemployed” Job, which sounds like a Dark Souls-style Deprived character. Boukenmeshi will also involve survival-game mechanics. This will involve managing the party’s calorie and water intake. Players can cook food while in camp, but also eat ingredients while fighting in strategic battles. These confer status effects and benefits from the consumption. Shikabanegurai no Boukenmeshi will launch for the Nintendo Switch and PS4 in Japan on January 27, 2022.