How to play Kitchen Flip
Kitchen Flip is a remake of the cooking games on the LCD handhelds of the early eighties. A cook with a frying pan stands under four columns, and a sausage, a fish, a drumstick and a pancake fly up and down above them.
Be under each food with the pan when it comes down and it goes back up for a point. Let one reach the floor and the mouse gets it.
Rules
- Everything moves in beats. On each beat every food in the air moves one step up or down. Each toss goes three to six steps high, and no two foods are ever due in the pan on the same beat.
- A food that comes down onto the pan is flipped back up for a point. One that comes down anywhere else lands on the floor, the mouse runs out and eats it, and the air is cleared before the next food drops in.
- Three drops end the game. The cat on the shelf sometimes spears a food at the top of the left column and holds it for a few beats, which changes when it comes down.
- At 200 and 500 points your drops are wiped. Reach either mark with none and every flip counts double until you next drop one.
- The beat speeds up through each hundred and eases off a little at every hundred, and more foods go up as the score climbs, up to four. Game B starts faster and with three.
Controls
- ← → / A D
- Move the cook one column
- 1 2 3 4
- Jump straight to a column
- Mouse / touch
- Click or tap the column you want; number buttons on phones
- P / Esc
- Pause
- Enter / Space
- Start
Tips
- Watch whatever is falling lowest; foods on the way up can wait.
- Use the number keys. They reach any column in one press, while the arrows need three to cross the kitchen.
- Keep an eye on the cat. A food on its fork comes down later than it looks, so do not wait under it.
Kitchen Flip strategy
How fast it gets
Game A opens with a beat of 0.44 seconds and Game B with 0.36. Each point takes 1.4 milliseconds off and each hundred takes 45 off for good while resetting the rest, so the beat eases off at 100, 200 and so on. The fastest beat is 0.20 seconds in Game A, from about 375 points, and 0.17 seconds in Game B, from about 270.
Reading the tosses
A toss of height h spends 2h beats in the air, so the lowest tosses come back after six beats and the highest after twelve. A food that drops in from the top takes as many beats as its height. Game A allows two foods at first and one more every 25 points, up to four at 50; Game B starts with three and allows the fourth at 20. The cat only spears foods that reach four steps or higher in the left column, and holds them for three beats.
About Kitchen Flip
Juggling food in a frying pan was one of the classic LCD handheld ideas: Nintendo’s Game & Watch Chef came out in 1981, with a cook flipping food and a cat reaching in with a fork, and the Soviet Elektronika line later made its own version, «Весёлый повар» (Merry Cook).
This version is an original remake with its own cook, cat and mouse, drawn as LCD segments with the faint ghosts of the unlit ones showing, as on the real screens.
Questions
Is this the original Chef or Merry Cook?
No. It is an original browser game inspired by the LCD handhelds, free and with nothing to install.
What is the difference between Game A and Game B?
The rules are the same. Game B starts with a faster beat and three foods, and gets to four sooner. Each keeps its own best score.
Can two foods land at the same time?
No. Each toss is timed so that no two foods are due in the pan on the same beat, so with the number keys every food can be caught.
How do I play on a phone?
Tap the column you want, or use the four number buttons under the game.
