Surely Midwest 90: Rapid City isn’t the first simmy, Fallouty game where you turn mutated monsters into grub and serve it up to customers in your own diner, is it? None come to mind right now. Let’s not make any assumptions all the same, we can still appreciate what the tycoon survival sim set in a monster apocalypse is doing: letting you run a roadhouse that makes meals out of all the horrific creatures that want to kill you in an attempt to make ends meat. Yes, the pun’s intended, I’m a professional writer, for heaven’s sake.

In Midwest 90: Rapid City, like other tycoon sims before it, it’s up to you to decide how your roadhouse looks. It’s a pretty simple-looking grid-based system, letting you plonk down tables and chairs, cooking equipment and the like wherever you like, all in the name of being able to serve your customers as best you can. To that end, part of your job is to research and develop recipes based on monster ingredients you’ve collected from killing the blighters. Subsequently, you design your menu based on what customers want, while also taking buffs and risks into consideration.

The monster killing element comes in the form of a tower defence section. Ahead of nightfall, you can set up all sorts of traps and defenses around your roadhouse along a set path, preferably wiping out all of the attacking monsters, their parts and entrails allowing you to further develop your menu. This all costs money, it should be noted, so it’s imperative that you don’t just invest in the front-facing part of the restaurant, you need to improve your defences too. It all sounds like it, once again pun intended, feeds into itself quite nicely.

If any of this is to your taste, there’s a demo you can try out right now. Or, if you aren’t in a rush right now, you could pick it up on November 10th, its recently confirmed early access release date (one that’s obviously sneaking in just a touch before that one game everyone seems to be excited about, you know the one). In any case, you could always throw it a wishlist on Steam ahead of its release next month.