Nour:
Play With Your Food
Review

Nour: Play With Your Food (2023) is an experimental music game where you create different dishes and plates of food. Unusually, the focus is on sound rather than just visuals. As you add ingredients and food elements they each add sounds.

You explore 20 vignettes, from the chaos of the classic American diner to the Zen purity of placing individual boba in a glass of milk tea. In each space, your task is to prepare delightful dishes, take the perfect picture and play with your creations.

It's a mix of beauty and chaos where the sounds the food makes is as much a part of the experience as the saccharine bright visuals. The music heats up, cools down, rises, mixes, and melts as you make and manipulate your dish. Each one creates a unique combination of ingredients and sounds so no two plays are the same. Wreak havoc, show restraint, and so too will the audio.

As you progress through each scene you discover unique ways to interact and play with the elements. The toaster level, for example, lets you make toast and conduct an orchestra at the same time. Bread flies into the air with a swell of violins, bassoons, and timpani. If you burn the toast what was once a bassoon is a bass and the temperament of the musicians changes. Or in the meat grinder level, you start in a calm foreboding world that takes a turn when you start grinding your food. The food and the sound are extruded together.

You can use the microphone on your controller or computer to interact with scenes by making noises, singing, whistling or blowing. It's a game that encourages exploration and experimentation. There are no right or wrong moves. There isn't a tight rhythm grid to match. Instead, your input is processed to recognise and reward melodies ranging from rigid to adventurous. If you do hit a beat you are rewarded with special powers: freeze foods to create a sculpture, turn day into night, or compel your food to dance to the music. There are even secret combinations of rhythm that activate special modes.

Our examiner, Jo Robertson, first checked Nour: Play With Your Food 2 years ago. It was re-examined by Andy Robertson and updated 11 weeks ago.