Town of Zoz mixes soul food and sword swings — here’s the real takeaway from its FGS reveal

Cooking, Combat, and Community-Why Town of Zoz Stood Out at FGS

Town of Zoz caught my eye at the Future Games Show Live because it’s aiming for a tricky recipe most games underseason: make food meaningful beyond buffs while keeping action combat satisfying. Studio Pixanoh’s pitch-embodying Ito, a “Shaman Chef” who heals a hometown’s buried trauma through cooking and monster-bashing-lands squarely in that sweet spot between cozy and crunchy. The trailer leaned into vibrant colors, community scenes, and some brisk blade work, hinting at a game that wants you to care about people as much as you care about damage numbers. It’s in development for PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox.

Key Takeaways

• Food isn’t just a stat stick—it’s the social glue, with relationships seemingly built dish by dish.
• Action looks nimble, but depth is the question: is it more Hades or more light hack-and-slash?
• The “healing trauma” angle could be powerful if handled with care, clumsy if gamified.
• Launching across PC, PS5, Xbox, and Switch is a win—performance parity on Switch is the big unknown.

Breaking Down the Announcement

Pixanoh’s trailer frames Ito as a returning hometown hero with a machete in one hand and a ladle in the other. You fight, you forage, you cook, you connect. That loop evokes Battle Chef Brigade’s genre blend, but Zoz looks more like a traditional action RPG with cooking woven through the narrative and social systems rather than its own puzzle mode. It’s a smart bet—players have shown up for games where the community matters (think Stardew’s relationships, Persona’s social links, or Coffee Talk’s conversations), and the idea of food as literal and emotional nourishment feels right at home in modern indie storytelling.

What the trailer doesn’t confirm (yet) is how tightly these systems lock together. If cooking is just “feed favorite item, watch a heart meter rise,” that’s old news. If meals meaningfully affect combat builds, unlock new moves, or even open narrative routes—now we’re talking. The footage implies action-forward dungeons and town life in equal measure; the substance will come down to how much your choices in the kitchen ripple outward.

Why This Matters Now

There’s a growing lane for games that sit between comfort and challenge—call it “cozy-adjacent.” Venba used cooking to tell a heartfelt immigrant family story; Spiritfarer made chores feel meditative and meaningful. Town of Zoz aims to push that idea into action RPG territory, asking players to slice through literal nightmares and then plate something healing for the people who conjured them. If Pixanoh nails the tone, it could be one of those rare RPGs where beating a boss isn’t the end of the story arc, just the opening for a tough conversation over shared food.

From a systems perspective, the pitch suggests a loop where you scout for ingredients, fight to secure rarer finds, then return to cook dishes that power both your build and your bonds. That can be addictive if the recipes form interesting trade-offs (big attack boost versus social gain; short-term buff versus long-term relationship unlocks). The risk is grind. If rare ingredients gatekeep story beats or if social progress demands repetitive gift-giving, the town will feel like a checklist instead of a community.

The Gamer’s Perspective: Promises and Pitfalls

This caught my attention because so few action RPGs make NPCs feel like more than quest dispensers. Food is a clever way to humanize those systems—every player has that moment in a game where a shared meal scene lands harder than a loot drop. But there are watchpoints:

• Combat depth: The trailer shows quick slashes and dodges, but we need to see buildcraft. Skill trees? Elemental infusions from ingredients? Synergies with companions? Without that, fights could blur together.
• Social nuance: “Hidden trauma” is heavy material. If quests reduce people’s pain to fetches or flavor text, players will smell the disconnect immediately.
• Switch performance: Cross-platform launches are great, but Switch needs careful optimization. If the town stutters or loading kills the day-night rhythm, it undermines the vibe.
• Progression pacing: The best loop gives you reasons to cook besides min-maxing—new scenes, different dialogue paths, maybe even changing how the town looks or behaves.

What I’m Watching For Next

Hands-on previews will tell us if cooking is cosmetic or consequential. I want to see how meals change the texture of combat—temporary buffs are fine, but imagine tying a defense-heavy stew to a parry window, or a spicy dish unlocking a brief damage-over-time effect. I’m also curious about companion interplay. If you earn trust through cooking and that evolves AI behaviors, tag-team attacks, or co-op-style assists, that’s the kind of feedback loop that keeps towns alive for dozens of hours.

On the narrative side, success means giving villagers arcs with agency. Let us mess up a dish, have that affect a conversation, and recover it later with a different recipe. Food is culture—if Town of Zoz reflects that with care and specificity rather than generic comfort-food vibes, it’ll resonate.

Looking Ahead

As it stands, Town of Zoz is one of the more intriguing genre blends on the horizon. It’s promising the heart of a social sim, the teeth of an action RPG, and the warmth of a cooking game—all set against a story about confronting what a community tries to bury. That’s a tall order, but if Pixanoh cooks these systems together instead of serving three separate courses, this could be a 2025 standout. Keep your expectations measured, but keep it on your radar.

TL;DR

Town of Zoz looks like a flavorful fusion of fast combat and relationship-driven cooking. The premise is strong; now it needs mechanical depth and narrative care to match. Watch for how cooking feeds into builds and bonds—and how well the Switch version holds up.