In 2017, Battle Chef Brigade was the kind of indie hit that's increasingly rare on the packed Steam store of 2024. The fascinating and novel combination of brawler and match-three puzzler didn't sell millions upon millions of copies or make its way onto many Game of the Year lists like this year's Balatro, but it did well enough to warrant a meaty update a year later. It was a Kickstarter game that actually came out and was good, a small miracle on its own. If you followed indie games at the time—when a mere 7,000 games were released on Steam, instead of nearly 19,000—you'd almost certainly at least heard of Battle Chef Brigade.
