Soup du Jour Review

Soup du Jour can’t exactly be described as a full main course, but it’s definitely great as a starter. This is match-3 gaming with a twist, with ingredients bouncing around in a boiling pot, all the time threatening to leak over the sides. Fast, aggressive gameplay is on the menu, with a big side-order of fun – if only it lasted a little longer we’d be ordering it with every meal, but as a quick distraction Soup du Jour is definitely worth a look.

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Cooking-themed match-3 now completely free to download.

Soup du Jour can’t exactly be described as a full main course, but it’s definitely great as a starter. This is match-3 gaming with a twist, with ingredients bouncing around in a boiling pot, all the time threatening to leak over the sides. Fast, aggressive gameplay is on the menu, with a big side-order of fun – if only it lasted a little longer we’d be ordering it with every meal, but as a quick distraction Soup du Jour is definitely worth a look.

Presented with a cooking pot, your task is to drag the falling ingredients together and match them up. Pull four or more of the same item together and they’ll all go pop, freeing up space in the pot and moving you closer to victory. Let too many of the ingredients bubble over the edges of the pot, however, and your cooking days are over.

Soup du Jour

Soup du Jour features some lovely bouncy physics, both on the menus and during play. As you drag an ingredient around the pot with your mouse, the other ingredients will bounce around, giving off a real spongy feel. The way the items boing off each other is incredibly satisfying, yet they don’t bounce so much that they’re constantly flying out of the pot – there’s a definite sense that you’re always in control, yet always on the edge.

With all this in mind, it’s no surprise that Soup du Jour puts a great spin on the match-3 genre, offering incredibly hectic yet familiar gaming. The first couple of levels allow you to work your way slowly into the concept, but by level three that pot begins to feel like a very small area! As bombs and rockets are introduced into play, you’ll be clicking and dragging all over the place and feeling very rushed indeed.

What makes this game so wonderfully unique is that you need to be very aggressive with your dragging and matching if you want any chance of surviving – those looking for a slow, relaxing puzzle game need not apply. Soup du Jour requires your full attention at all times, and there’s never a moment when you’re not dragging objects around.

Soup du Jour

However, this does also mean that everything can go horribly wrong within seconds, which can be very disheartening. You’re allowed to let five ingredients fall over the sides, yet if just one single bomb ends up in your soup, you’ll most likely lose all five of those chances in one blow. Losing in this way feels a little cheap and puts a bit of a downer on play.

There are ten levels to play through, each more difficult than the last as ingredients fall more quickly and pots shrink to smaller sizes. While the game is great fun, there isn’t too much to see, and you’ll most likely have played through everything Soup du Jour has to offer within half an hour. Of course, it’s a free game, so we can’t really complain too much!

Soup du Jour provides a fresh, frantic take on the match-3 genre of gaming, and does so with great style. You won’t be playing it for long, but you’ll definitely enjoy the time you do spend with the game.

The good

    The bad

      80 out of 100