The Diner at the End of the Galaxy will be as Much Diplomacy as it is Dinnertime

While it may be true that the developers of The Diner at the End of the Galaxy have styled the upcoming restaurant management sim as a Tycoon-style game, thinking that all players will be doing is running their restaurant would do the General Interactive title a disservice. Rather than just adding a bit of a twist to the conventions of the business sim genre, Diner at the End of the Galaxy folds in inspirations far outside the Tycoon games its lead developer, Mark Fillon, compares it to. It counts among its inspirations Oxygen Not Included and Crusader Kings, while the diner itself takes a little after the Continental Hotel from John Wick.

In a recent Game Rant interview, Fillon explained that the core loop of managing a restaurant serves as a way to interact with more, sprawling systems that take the owner of the titular diner and position them as a powerbroker in a post-war Pataliputra Galaxy. Indeed, the game has far more ambition than simply having players concerned with the store’s daily profits and losses.

We like to describe the game as a diplomacy game masquerading as a diner management game. Even though the core gameplay loop is diner management–you’re growing crops, you’re cooking food, you’re serving it to customers, and you’re making money–the end goal is actually much bigger than just being profitable…Your diner is neutral ground for everyone in the galaxy to come together and trade, interact, and exchange information. You are right in the heart of this bustling galaxy trying to recover from a really devastating war.

This is because, like Wick’s Continental, the diner is neutral ground, a kind of “sacred safe space” free of hostile conduct, according to Fillon. All the post-war politics of the galaxy flow through the player’s diner as the three main factions of the game vye both for influence and the best seat in the house.

Those factions include the mercantile Bani Shamal, who are native to the world the diner is on; the hedonistic court of Prince Vernon, who follow the foolish man-child as the last survivor of a royal line; and the Caracal’s Army, guided by the badass revolutionary Caracal herself. Each of the three is looking to control what they can following The Great Disagreement, the galactic war that devastated civilizations throughout known space.

Pleasing these factions involves events right from the playbook of grand strategy games. A faction may seek help from the diner, and players can either help the faction, sabotage them, or refuse to intervene. Based on the player’s choices, they may be rewarded or penalized by that or other factions, all seeking to advance sometimes conflicting agendas. Earning favor with a faction can give the diner access to more patrons from that group or even means to expand in a particular direction.

The diner’s expansion, too, is a little different from what may be expected in a restaurant management game. For instance, since the diner is built on the remains of a previous outpost, salvage missions are required before the player’s business can expand. The rewards for these salvage operations include “Mystery Meat” which, Fillon implies, is likely some manner of alien vermin that have taken up residence in the outpost’s remains. He recommended against telling customers where their dinners came from.

The game also includes an Oregon Trail-like stellar exploration mechanic, where the diner can send a ship and crew out into the cosmos in search of loot–be that riches, trophies for the diner to display, or other trinkets–but the ship must contend with the trials of deep-space exploration along the way.

Your crew is subject to very risky and dangerous events; they could run out of fuel, which means that they could get lost in space and you could lose your ship. They could run out of rations, and there’s a chance that this might result in cannibalism onboard this ship. Or everything might go smooth sailing, they arrive at their destination, and they do what they have to do and bring back some really, really cool loot.

All these systems together combine to create something more than the diner management sim at the game’s core, yet all fuel that engine in their own way, making the goal of running the diner, the goal of bringing peace to the galaxy, and the goal of exploring the unknown one and the same for the ultra-ambitious restaurateur of a galaxy in shambles.

The Diner at the End of the Galaxy will enter Early Access in Q1 2024 on Steam.