PlateUp! – Beginners Guide

Brief overview for the game. Contains spoilers.

Guide for New Players

Introduction

Hello, welcome. The aim of this guide is just to give pointers about how the game works and some minor tips for playing. I’ve written it in bullet point style so it won’t get too long to read.

About the Game

So the premise of the game is to survive as far as you can by serving customers before their patience runs out. The game is categorized as Roguelite so you will still progress even if you fail a run.

You start out in your Headquarters by choosing the map and menu you want to serve, and maybe bring some items with you. After that you head to your chosen restaurant and you sort out the setup of tables and the kitchen. When you’re ready you can start the day and serve the customers as quick as you can. The game will hand you out blueprints every end of the day that you can buy to improve your restaurant.

The game will get progressively harder as you go on; customer numbers will increase, random buff/debuff cards will be give, and more dish to serve. Besides the RNG of the cards and blueprints, multiplayer will also add a challenge to the game as you need to be in-sync to get things done in the most efficient manner as possible. Be warned that you might lose some friends irl while playing this game. Just kidding. Have fun!

Game Options

  • Colorblind mode is available in the options. If enabled, the game will label most food items with abbreviations to help you identify them quickly.
  • You can also remap the controls to your liking.
  • Livesplit integration is also available if you plan to speedrun the game.
  • The game can be played even if only 1 person owns the game through steam remote play. However, only one player can use the keyboard and the others must use controllers.

Headquarters

You will spawn in HQ as you start your game. You can choose a color and costume for your character, change profiles by interacting on the bed, you can invite your friends for co-op, choose your restaurant map and menu, and pick appliances to bring with you. A tutorial room is also available for you to use.

Note that you can only have one save file per profile, starting a new run will overwrite your previous unfinished run. So I suggest abandoning it first to get the experience or saving it as a franchise before starting a fresh run.

The Office

  • The center room.
  • Here you can select the map and menu you want for your run.
  • Additional map slots and menu variety can be unlocked as you level up.
  • The menu to choose from will be laid out randomly. But you can use the tutorial instead of quitting the game to reroll the menu.
  • At level 5, the flower pot can be used to enter a seed of the map.
  • A map seed has fixed drops for blueprints, customer, and franchise cards.

Franchise Room

  • Located above the office.
  • Unlocked after completing Day 15.
  • Can continue the previous franchised run with a starting set of selected cards.
  • Tiers can be achieved by continuously completing a franchise (i.e. Tier 2 gets unlocked after doing Tier 1 Day 15).
  • Tier 2 and above will inherit the cards from previous tiers.
  • A failed franchise/tier run will not return to the cabinet and will be permanently gone.

Test Kitchen

  • Located beside the franchise room.
  • You can practice on preparing the menu you chose by serving the cats.
  • You cannot bring ingredients with you to the loading bay.

Garage

  • Located on the upper left.
  • You get 1 random item that you can take with you in your future runs. 25 slots are available but the game will start stacking the crates once it gets full, hence allowing you to store more than 25 items.
  • You can only get 1 random item after Day 2 regardless of the length of the run.
  • Item farming can be done by abandoning restaurant on Day 3, 5, and 8.
  • A pool of random items can be farmed depending on which day you choose to abandon:
    • Day 3: Counter, Hob, Mop, Extra Life.
    • Day 5: Danger Hob, Safety Hob, Gas Override, Gas Limiter, Mixer, CandleBox, Vase, Rug, Plant, Calm Painting, Extra Life, Upgrade Kit.
    • Day 8: Power Sink, Wash Basin, Dish Washer, Freezer, Microwave, Extra life, Upgrade Kit.
  • The conveyor can be used to dispose unwanted items by combining it with other items:
    • 2 different upgraded appliance = 1 Upgrade Kit.
    • 2 identical appliance = 1 Random Item.
    • 3 different appliance = 1 Random Item.
    • 1 upgradable appliance + Upgrade Kit = 1 Upgraded appliance.
  • The loading bay, located below of the Garage, can be used to bring a max of 2 items with you for your run.

Restaurant

Once you are ready you can head to your chosen map. You cannot change the size of your chosen restaurant in the middle of the game. Please note that locations have different weather effects that can impact customer patience when they queue outside. Also maps can be themed like ‘Halloween’ or ‘Autumn’, which has a unique added mechanics.

Preparation Phase

  • The day will start with Preparation Phase where you can setup tables and appliances and buy blueprints for your restaurant.
  • A Booking Desk will be provided at the start of the run. It will disappear on Day 2 if you forget to unpack it.
  • The game will automatically scale the amount of groups depending on how many players there are:
    • Solo – 0.8x groups.
    • 2 people – 1.0x groups.
    • 3 people – 1.25x groups.
    • 4 people – 1.5x groups.
  • Setup can be divided as front-of-the-house (FoH) where you serve customers, back-of-the-house (BoH) where your kitchen is, office for your blueprint cabinets and research desks, and a waiting room (coffee tables) for your customers.
  • Some appliances can cause a debuff on customers when placed near them like the sink or the hobs so plan accordingly.
  • Serving windows can be used to pass items to the FoH. Doors become serving windows if an appliance or counter is placed beside it.

Decoration Day

  • On day 6 decor day will let you choose your own theme bonuses for your restaurant.
  • Eight decor blueprints will be spawned on this day. However, if you have Blueprint Desks it will spawn additional non-decor blueprints corresponding to the number of Blueprint Desks that you have.
  • Decor items will give you points which can unlock your chosen theme bonus.
  • You will get another Decoration Day every 5th day.

Practice Mode

  • A practice mode is available to see how your setup works during service.
  • Food items inside appliances (ex. freezer) won’t be overwritten during practice mode
  • You can use practice mode to:
    • Rotate grabbers, set grabbers.
    • Simulate how your setup runs on service day.
  • Your setup gets saved every time you enter Practice mode.

Service

  • A time bar is located on top to see the current time of day. Once the time bar is full customers will stop arriving by default. Using the Booking Desk advances the time bar (this is important to note when you’re looking out on a Blueprint Desk).
  • Expected customers can be viewed on the upper left of the screen. One group will occupy 1 dining table given that there are enough seats for them. Otherwise they will wait and form a queue
  • Ringing the Booking Desk will instantly call in the next group and advance the time of day. Using it can give you bonus income each time but can also create a surge of customers. So ring wisely
  • A fire can breakout during service, be careful not to burn food or mishandle an appliance. You won’t be able to use an item/appliance that is on fire. Note that the rate of the fire spreading depends on how many current players there are, with 4 players the fire will spread 1.5x fast.
  • A fire can spread through adjacent items or even on floor spills but can’t spread through walls and service windows. So keep the floors spotless!
  • A trash can is available outside if you need disposal, it has unlimited capacity. You can also place garbage bags on top of counters but not on floors.
  • If you somehow made a mistake accidentally, the host can quit the game (Alt+F4), reload and resetting it back to preparation day.

Meal Courses

  • Three courses are currently available: Starter, Main (with Sides, optional), Dessert (optional)
  • A customer or group will always get the main course.
  • A customer will sometimes order a side together with its main course when its available.
  • Once a starter gets available customers will always order one before ordering their main course.
  • A dessert will be optional for customers to order once it becomes available.

Customer Behaviour

  • Customers will start coming in when the day is started and look for a dining table to sit. They will form a queue outside or in coffee tables if there are no available dining tables.
  • Once the customers are seated on the dining table they will pause to think what to order. When the player tap to see what their orders are a wait bar will start ticking.
  • Delivering an incomplete order will trigger a short delivery timer, so make sure orders are ready at hand before delivering them.
  • The number of groups will progressively increase as you go on. Cards can increase or decrease the total number of groups and group size, as well as the amount of players currently in.
  • 1 group can have 1 or 2 customers depending on your current group size. So if you have expected 5 Groups with 1-2 Group sizes, you will get 5 minimum to 10 maximum customers that you need to serve.
  • Be reminded that night time and weather affects their queue patience when they are queuing outside.
  • During dining, customers will create a mess 1 tile wide every time they finish a meal.
  • Serve them before any of the timer bar runs out or it will be game over.

Research & Blueprints

  • You can use the Blueprint Cabinet to upgrade, copy, or discount a blueprint. Desk effect only applies to adjacent Blueprint Cabinets. There are four available desks in the game that involves researching:
    • Research Desk – used to upgrade a blueprint.
    • Copying Desk – used to create a copy of the original blueprint.
    • Discount Desk – used to cut the cost of the blueprint by half.
    • Blueprint Desk – cycles a random list of blueprints that you can choose to be spawned on the next day.
  • The order on which desk you use first won’t matter as the effect will always gets applied once it is used.
  • An object will appear on top of the Blueprint Cabinet on what active desk is around it. And different desk effect can be applied at the same time as long as it is adjacent to the cabinet.
  • You can only use the desks during service time.
  • Some Blueprints can have up to three tiers of upgrade.
  • A Blueprint can have two possible outcomes when upgrading to the next tier and researching it will get you a random result.
  • Some Blueprints can also be upgraded in a cyclic manner. This will be helpful if you need a copy of everything.

Blueprints

  • By default, 5 blueprints shall spawn every end of a round. Four of which are staple blueprints and 1 random blueprint. The staple pool will decrease in number (-1 every fifth day) to a minimum of 2 staple blueprints. For example, by day 10 the game will spawn 2 staple blueprints and 3 random blueprints.
  • Staple blueprints have two subcategories. If the conditions are met then the game will continue to spawn these blueprints:
    • Permanent Staple Blueprints – Counter, Dining Table, Hob, Sink.
    • Conditional Staple Blueprints – these blueprints have a higher spawn if the game sees it doesn’t exist yet on the restaurant: Plates, Research Desk, Blueprint Cabinet.
  • Conditional Staple Blueprints can still spawn even if it already exists on the restaurant.
  • Map seeds heavily influence what blueprints will drop. These blueprints are categorized as Seed Pool.
  • You will only get menu blueprints if you serve the corresponding menu. For example, you will never get Apple blueprint if you are not serving Apple Pies.
  • A photocopied blueprint cannot be returned to the cabinet once its taken out. However, they can be used to reroll blueprints into random ones.
  • Rerolling blueprints corresponds to what day it is. For example, if it is decor day rerolling will only give you decor blueprints.
  • The Blueprint Desk can increase the number of blueprints spawned. For example, if you have 7 Blueprint Desks there will be 7 + 1 staple blueprint that will spawn at the end of the day.
Helena Stamatina
About Helena Stamatina 1782 Articles
My first game was Naughty Dog’s Crash Bandicoot (PlayStation) back in 1996. And since then gaming has been my main hobby. I turned my passion for gaming into a job by starting my first geek blog in 2009. When I’m not working on the site, I play mostly on my PlayStation. But I also love outdoor activities and especially skiing.

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