As part of our big 2026 Fall Preview, Polygon can exclusively reveal that Food Devils, an upcoming strategy RPG from Studio Daimon, will launch on Nov. 5. The game is shaping up to be a late-year indie darling, thanks to its eclectic yet engrossing mix of hot demons with tactics RPG, restaurant customization, and dating sim gameplay mechanics.
In Food Devils, players are a chef recruiting demons so they can survive in a post-apocalyptic world. You attract those demons (physically and romantically) by cooking for them. To get the ingredients for that food, players have to hunt and kill enemies in grid-based tactical battles reminiscent of Fire Emblem games. After that, players can customize and serve food at their restaurant, which will be visited by adventurers, and gain the attention of the five titular Food Devils, with whom players forge a Devil Contract or romance.
If that sounds like a lot of gameplay systems, well, it is. Ahead of the announcement, Studio Daimon offered Polygon a deep-dive interview into many of the game’s core mechanics. The developer highlighted how all of Food Devils‘ systems cleverly intertwine and (for lack of a better word) feed back into one another. Game director Alfred Kamon also pointed out some of the conventional Fire Emblem gameplay systems that Food Devils turns on its head.
An exclusive interview with the developers of Food Devils
Image: Studio Daimon
Food Devils mixes a ton of different elements — what makes those systems feel like parts of one game rather than separate modes, and what’s the best example of them feeding into each other?
Alfred Kamon, game director on Food Devils: One of the main goals while designing Food Devils was to make every system feed into the next one. You hunt monsters to get ingredients, cook those ingredients into dishes that buff your party, customize the restaurant to attract different adventurers, then bring those adventurers back into the next expedition. Even the story is structured around that loop, because characters react to what happens during runs and the restaurant keeps evolving between them.
A simple example is recruitment. Changing your furniture changes the kind of adventurers who visit and their personal traits. The food you cook affects general stats for your next expedition, like healing potency or movement. So the restaurant isn’t meant to feel like a separate management chore — it’s actually the relaxing half of the tactics game. And while we put a lot of care into the food animations, we didn’t add any cooking minigames on purpose, because we knew our players would want to jump right back into character relationships and tactical gameplay.
The Devil Contract system can completely reclass an adventurer depending on which Devil they partner with. How dramatically can that change the way the same character plays, and what kinds of strategies does that open up from run to run?
Pretty dramatically. An adventurer is summoned with specific stats and personal traits. Then a Devil Contract can reclass them, change their appearance, and give them a different starting toolkit, so the same person can fill a very different role depending on which Devil is captaining the expedition.
That also means you can take an adventurer you like, pair them with a different Devil, and suddenly you’re building around a completely different set of strengths and synergies. Then the roguelite layer pushes it further: Skill Packs and Events let you evolve that version of the unit throughout the run, while Master Rules reshape the strategy you’re building around. Ideally, you can look at the same Shielder-class adventurer and think, “Will you grant Armor and push enemies away during this run, or will you summon a swarm of Bombees and heal poisoned allies?”
Image: Studio Daimon
Calories and Hunger are described as one of the game’s twists on traditional tactics RPG combat. How do those systems actually change the decisions a player makes during an expedition compared with something like Fire Emblem?
As a huge Fire Emblem fan, I’ve always found it funny that your “Jagen” characters (the pre-promoted veterans) often end up benched because they’re too strong or steal EXP from the rest of the army. Food Devils kind of flips that idea. Every expedition has one Devil as your absurdly powerful “pre-promote”, and up to four human adventurers.
Here’s the catch: Devils need Calories to perform their powerful attacks, and the humans generate those Calories by interacting with the battlefield. At the beginning of each run, you choose a Master Rule that defines how you’ll generate them: it might be something as weird as ending your movement next to a Bonfire, or making your summons explode. I know, Devils can be quite capricious at times.
The humans are far from dead weight, though. With the right skills and combinations, they can do a lot of the work themselves. And there’s a price: every Calorie generated also inflicts 1 Hunger on that adventurer, and too much Hunger can kill them permanently. So you’re constantly deciding how much you’re willing to squeeze out of your humans to empower the Devil. That balance between greed and safety is one of my favorite parts of a run, and it’s inspired by some of my favorite roguelikes, like Darkest Dungeon and Aethermancer.
The game tracks the “culture” of your restaurant based on things like how aggressively or peacefully you play. What are some ways a player’s combat style or cooking choices can unexpectedly change characters, relationships, or the story?
Food Devils takes some time to introduce its evolving mechanics, lore and characters. But once the player is familiar with the world, choices start to carry more weight. These world-changing features are still in development, but the intention is to make the player’s chosen “gameplay route” feel increasingly reflected in the world itself.
For example, if you develop the restaurant according to Poison Devil’s progress-obsessed advice, money may eventually be introduced into what starts as a completely free restaurant, and you’ll be able to purchase scientifically enhanced starting skills. Follow Vegan Devil’s ideals instead, and you can unlock a pacifist route where neutralizing monsters is favored over killing them.
The idea is that aligning yourself with a Devil also means engaging with their ideology, and eventually allowing that ideology to affect the main mechanics of the game.
You can romance the Food Devils, but you can also influence their relationships with one another. How do those relationships affect the actual strategy game, and what did you want this system to do that players wouldn’t normally get from a traditional RPG romance system?
I love romance in my RPGs, but I’ve always found it a bit strange when the relationship stops existing after the confession scene, aside from maybe some stat bonuses or slightly different dialogue. In Food Devils, relationships are part of progression because a Devil is literally an embodiment of Appetite — a very strong drive and ideology. The more you nurture that Appetite through quests and support conversations, the more powerful that Devil can become, unlocking new meta-progression abilities.
You can also encourage the Devils to grow closer to each other, and those bonds can affect the strategic options available to you. For example, normally, if you select Hunter Devil as the captain of your expedition, all of your adventurers use Hunter’s Devil Contract. But if Hunter somehow grows fond of Poison, he’ll allow some of them to use Poison’s Contract instead. This creates a unique mix of starting skills and Master Rules that can push the run towards some extremely fun combos.
Some Support conversations are also key to developments in the main story. In general, I know players are attracted to the designs of our Devils, and I wanted to give them not only satisfying dialogue, but also consequences that make their choices feel alive. Oh, and spicy dialogue. Because there isn’t nearly enough spiciness in non-erotic RPGs nowadays.
Image: Studio Daimon
If Studio Daimon’s erotic, genre-mashing Food Devils sounds intriguing to you, we thankfully don’t have to wait too much longer to play it. Food Devils will be released Nov. 5, and already has a four-hour free demo that you can check out on Steam.
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