Mini Review: Neon Noodles (PS5)

Neon Noodles is an assembly line puzzle game set in a dystopian future where it’s your job to mass-produce various items of food. While that may sound a fairly tasty premise on the face of it, unfortunately the game itself doesn’t quite have the sauce.

The game is essentially about organising grid-based automations to fulfil specific recipes in the most efficient way you can think of.

For example, you might need to make fried rice; this involves preparing rice, vegetables, and chicken before bringing it all together to complete the order.

Precisely how you do this is down to you. At your disposal are robots, who can perform actions like moving and picking up items, and various stations where they can cook food items. You can tell a robot what to do by recording the actions you want it to take.

You’re essentially programming a series of commands to achieve each puzzle, with a soft goal of doing so in the fewest moves and smallest area.

It’s a gameplay formula that’s been done a few times before, and Neon Noodles makes a fair attempt at it. Each object has a simplified neon symbol, making them easy to identify, and it can be fun figuring out the best way to approach each mission.

Ultimately, though, it’s cumbersome to play on a controller, the difficulty is inconsistent, and as the game layers in more complex puzzles, it all becomes a bit messy.

Menus are finicky and the controls are confusing at first, with lots of functions to get used to. It very much feels like one of those games designed for mouse and keyboard, and while an attempt has been made to squash it all down to a pad, it hasn’t quite worked.

There are the bones of a decent game in here, but its issues prevent it from being the compulsive factory puzzler we were hoping for.