Torched!
A rookie cook in a small Paris restaurant with only a blowtorch: golden creme brulee, no burns, and a sharp-tongued critic to face.
Torched! is a blowtorch cooking game: you are the new cook at Chez Flambeau, a small restaurant in Paris, and all you have got is a blowtorch. Creme brulee has to come out golden, a whole salmon lightly seared, a lemon meringue tart torched only on the peaks and not in the valleys — too much and it is burnt, too little and it is raw, and the heat is entirely in your hands. The controls are simple: hold the torch to fire, move it away to stop. But your hand cannot stop or wander. Holding still for just over a second burns a hole; waving it around never earns full marks. Each night runs about three minutes, with four nights plus an endless mode, and customers make all sorts of picky demands — one wants it "a bit more burnt, I like the bitter taste," another just says "burn it all, all of it." The details are taken seriously: the sugar surface is simulated on a 96x96 grid, with where the flame lands, how heat spreads, and how melting and caramelizing work all calculated cell by cell, and thin spots cook faster. At the end of each night, the sharp-tongued critic Gaston scores you in the newspaper and reads it out to you himself; tips and stars are your score, and collecting 8 stamps takes you from rookie to titles like "arsonist." Open the itch page and play in your browser, with mouse or touch — best with the sound on so you can hear the critic's barbs. One warning, though: your records and stamps live only in your browser. Switch browsers or clear your data and they are gone, so do not treat them as a long-term save.
@astrid.howard