Rat Game Review – Enemy Knows All

The battle between chef and pest has raged ever since food preparation existed. You get to experience both sides of the conflict in Rat Game, a comedy horror multiplayer game. Developed and published by Sokpop Collective, you play as either the chef or the rat deciding the fate of the restaurant. Can you successfully protect your restaurant before things spiral out of control or will it shut down due to chaos?

You choose to join a game where you can be a chef or a rat. One chef pursues between two to seven rats per game. The rats must sabotage the restaurant in various ways to reduce its star rating and force closure. Saving the restaurant requires the chef to stop the rats long enough before they sabotage everything. Any sabotage usually involves pushing objects over or creating a spooky atmosphere. Dealing with the rats involves mouse traps or directly catching a rat to put in a cage.

It’s a comedic premise that made me chuckle at times. While rats are far more dangerous to a restaurant in real life, Rat Game focuses on humor instead of horror. I liked how sabotage focused on pushing objects over or giving the chef a scare. This made the rats more funny and the chef’s actions less dangerous. You also never see the chef kill a rat, at best stun them before putting them in a cage. I thought this maintained the light-hearted comedy while giving the rats a chance to recover.

Rats are largely helpless against the chef once they are caught and put in a cage. That’s why it’s important that they either scurry around or use various hiding places. However the rats get hungry and can’t hide forever, requiring them to find food to eat. If they run out of food, it’s easy pickings for the chef to catch them. On the other hand, the chef never gets tired but must deal with multiple rats at once. I thought it was a good balance that never makes the game too unfair.

Even though the chef is up against multiple rats, it’s not hard for them to keep them separated. The more rats you have, the more tasks they must complete. Completing an objective takes some effort, giving the chef a chance to interrupt the rats with a capture. Even if catching every rat isn’t realistic, the chef only needs to run out the clock. I thought this was a good balance to keep the fun going without making things too unfair to the chef.

However you must largely learn how to play through actual games as there is no tutorial. If you try to practice on your own, you can only play as a rat. I found the AI chef was too unbalanced as they always knew where you were. With other people you could probably turn the situation around. But practicing on your own was not possible since the AI chef always tracks you down.

Rat Game provides a good template for chaotic multiplayer fun by giving rats a chance to recover. Both sides have reasonably equal advantages to prevent gameplay from feeling unfair, but practicing on your own is difficult since the opposing AI almost always knows where you are. There is fun to be had, but only if there are other people to play with. Trying to have fun on your own is a monumental task that won’t pay off.

Victor reviewed Rat Game on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and our score will not be changed.