Cooking Companions: Appetizer Edition

Cooking Companions: Appetizer Edition is a free-to-play short horror visual novel that released on October 6, 2020. It serves as a self-contained prequel/demo experience ("more than a demo") for the full Cooking Companions game. The full game launched on October 7, 2021. The most significant post-launch update arrived on April 30, 2025, when Deer Dream Studios released a major console update in partnership with Serenity Forge, bringing the game to Nintendo Switch, PS4/PS5, and Xbox. This update was also delivered free to all existing Steam owners and included 15 new fully animated cutscenes, gameplay improvements, bug fixes, and full translations into Spanish, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, Korean, and Brazilian Portuguese. The developer framed this as a thank-you to their community for years of support. The store description describes this as a "self contained story" — a complete, standalone experience. There are no unreleased DLC entries; the only DLC (the Stuffed Fanpack cosmetic/bonus content) released on launch day in 2020. The developer's focus since mid-2023 has been almost entirely on the sequel, Dread Weight, which launched in July 2024. The April 2025 console update appears to represent the culmination of post-launch support for this title. No further content has been announced for the Appetizer Edition. The most recent developer communication was a sale announcement on March 21, 2026, which recapped the console update but revealed no new planned content. All evidence points to this game being a complete, finished product as of the April 2025 console update.