Let me talk about the conclusion first: On the surface, this game is a food personification + restaurant management, but if you only treat it as a casual collection game, it will be a real loss. As an old viewer who spends many years on the KPL and LPL tactical boards, I accidentally smelled a very pure competitive flavor in this game, especially the "touch in battle" mode. To put it bluntly, it is manual movement + skill release timing, which is similar to the micro-management logic in MOBA.
When many people get started, they may think, isn't this just a matter of tapping the screen to let the food souls fight? But if you actually play high-difficulty versions or play against players (if deeper PVP is opened later), you will find that each food soul's displacement determination, attack forward swing, skill range, and even the hardness of the hit can all be calculated. In the test, I tried to use melee food souls to deceive the opponent's long-range ultimate move by swinging forward and then charging forward. The instant prediction and reaction were the same as the player card flashing CD when watching a game. This upper limit of operation cannot be replaced by simply stacking values.
Let's talk about lineup matching. In the game, there is a division of labor between front row, output, auxiliary, and control, and there is also connection and cooperation between different food souls. For example, some food souls' skills can gather monsters, and when combined with AOE bursts, they can deal full damage; or use shield-type food souls to block the opponent's key skills to protect the output environment in the back row. Isn't this the common rhythm of "starting a team - controlling the field - harvesting" in games? Moreover, the restraint relationship between professions (food soul positioning) is very clear, which determines that you have to make multiple choices in the lineup game - whether to be sure to use two front rows to ensure fault tolerance, or to gamble on a wave of bursts in the back row. The idea is exactly the same as in the BP stage.
Of course, as a competitive game, balance is definitely an unavoidable topic. In the current version, some food souls are indeed very powerful. For example, a single explosive character can almost make the final decision after tilting resources, which makes the game rhythm tend to go in the direction of "raising the big brother". But the good news is that the development team is quite diligent in adjusting the frequency. At least from my observation, there are patches for overly strong mechanisms every season. As long as this trend can be maintained, I think it has the potential to become an e-sports event with both entertainment and strategic depth - at least it is worth talking about a few more tactical dimensions than many mobile games with automatic battles.
Finally, to be honest, I am not posting this post to brag about how perfect it is, but because I feel that in current mobile games, there are too few products that can take into account character development, micro-management space and lineup strategy at the same time. "Eat Contract" is definitely worthy of being seen by more people under the topic of "recommended mobile games with competitive potential". If you are also tired of the kind of numerical games that "crush you when your combat power is high, and get stuck when your combat power is not enough", you might as well try this work that can win back a victory through operation and imagination. Maybe in the next version, the routine you developed will be on the popular tactics list. 😏