First shown off during the March ID@Xbox showcase, Soup Pot is the debut title of Manila developer Chikon Club. The adorable-looking cooking game captured my attention with the reveal that it possesses no fail states (a rarity for cooking games), so I caught up with Chikon Club's Trina Pagtakhan and Gwendelyn Foster to talk about how the game grades the player without failing them.

Eventually, our conversation turned to other aspects of Soup Pot, such as the game's connection to real-world events. Soup Pot sees you play as someone stuck indoors during a pandemic, teaching yourself how to cook in order to pass the time and have something to eat. Your only human interaction are the chat rooms for your livestreams that document your efforts and conversations with the people delivering ingredients to your door. You also fill your downtime by scrolling through a fictional cooking-based social media site called Cookbook, where you'll remain apprised of what's going on in the world. So even though Soup Pot is a cute, humor-focused exploration of Filipino and Southeast Asian cuisine, there's a meaningful underlying narrative thread to the game too.

My conversation with Pagtakhan and Foster is transcribed below. Edits have been made to aid in readability. Soup Pot is scheduled to launch for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC in August.