What is Cheese Doing in Video Games?

While most people don’t typically think of video games and cheese being together, the truth is cheese has shown up in video games for decades. Games have had cheese-themed levels, cheese items that players can use, cheese side-quests as well as having entire games based around cheese. Cheese is even a video game slang term and features prominently in a snack food that is incredibly popular with gamers.

As far back as 1994, Art & Magic, a video game company, released Cheese Chase where you are a mouse that collects cheese in a maze while avoiding rats and other obstacles. More recently in 2023 Baldur’s Gate 3, players can transform into a wheel of cheese and roll around. It doesn’t have a huge impact on the game, but over 1.2 million players have opted for the transformation as of December 2023, according to Screen Rant.

The Slang Term “Cheesing”

One of the biggest cheese and video game overlaps is the slang term “cheesing” and its derivatives “cheese strategy” and “cheese a game.” “Cheesing” means that the video game player is doing an action that is all but cheating in a game. That could mean anything from using a move repeatedly or finding a way to defeat the game and/or another opponent in a way game designers had not intended.

Initially, the phrase had little to do with the cheese we eat. Some people think it might come from the phrase “cheesy” as in something badly made or embarrassing. Message boards report that it came from a 2009 live broadcast, where Um Jae Kyung, a professional South Korean StarCraft caster, claimed that it originated from the word “cheater” because in Korean words can be shortened in the middle. Others place its first use in the arcade game Street Fighter II forum in 1993. The slang term is still used in circles today.

However, video game developers decided to “bring the cheese” to try to stop “cheesing.” Several companies wanted to discourage the tactic in the 1990s. Video game companies like Atari and Capcom added a feature where if a player is cheesing, a chunk of cheese will drop from the top of the screen and the game will force the player to stop the action.

Cheese is iconic

Video games have used cheese for themed levels, health items, and side quests for several decades.

For instance, In 1999 Worms Armageddon, players fight each other using worms on a moon-cheese level. Then there’s 2007 Ratatouille the game, based on the Pixar film of the same name, where Remy has to jump from cheese wheel to cheese wheel.

One explanation why cheese comes up in various video games is that it’s iconic, speculates Jordan Minor, author of Video Game of the Year and senior analyst of apps and software for PC Magazine. In the early decades of video games when the graphics were fairly limited what could be displayed, most people could quickly recognize some yellow pixels together as representing cheese.

That iconic cheese wedge also sticks out on a game map, said Egan Hirvela, senior game designer. “The wedge shape is going to definitely draw your attention to something and usually means food,” he explained, “I'm not going to sit there and question whether or not I should eat it. It’s probably going to help in some way” like providing health or bonuses to the player. In contrast, a mushroom could be beneficial (think Mario Bros) or poisonous.

For Hamza Kubba, creator and founder of Perplex, a tiny game studio, cheese pizza fit the parameters of his soon-to-be released game Space Pizza. Originally, he wanted to make a building game based on a circle where you had to build it up and defend from enemies attacking at all sides. He was looking for a theme and chose pizza because of the circle theme. At first, he rejected it since it was too silly, Kubba said, but then it kept coming back to him so he decided to use it for the game.

During the game, players mine the cheese for gems, which makes dents in the cheese. It ended up working well to showcase the 3D animations he wanted to showcase in the game. The substance of cheese also lent itself well to the game. “Cheese is this kind of substance that defies definition sometimes, especially when it's molten. It's sort of like somewhere between solid and liquid,” Kubba said, “I think there’s a lot of potential for cheese in games because of the way it reacts to things.” Thanks to the iconic shape of pizza and the color and malleability of cheese, it worked with the game concept.

Hirvela pointed out that cheese shows up in a lot of role player games (RPGs) where players collect items, like 2012 Guild Wars II. While he worked as a map designer on the game and did not work much with the inventory items, he knew the other designers and there was talk about what food items would be put in the game. “Of course, everyone loves cheese,” he said. In the game, players can find cheese, combine it with other ingredients and make recipes.

Cheese as a source of humor

Cheese is often used as a source of humor in video games (and other media). As noted in the introduction, players have the option of becoming a sentient cheese wheel for part of the game in Baldur’s Gate III. It does not appear to have a substantial impact on the game, aside from a fun thing to do and witness.

Similarly, it’s fun to watch Donkey Kong navigate between wedges or blocks of cheese from the ceiling in 2014 Donkey Kong, Tropical Freeze, At one point, there’s a giant wheel of cheese that Donkey Kong has to at times outrun and outmaneuver a la Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It’s meant to be humorous and enjoyable to play.

It’s also a great avenue for puns. In 2015, cheese was featured in Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. In the quest Of Dairy and Darkness, you are exploring a deceased tyromancer named Aeramas’ manor. There you have to navigate a maze of cheeses and cheese statues where the smell is toxic.

Anyone growing up with Ducktales or Looney Tunes will recognize the trope of stinky cheese since stinky cheeses like Limburger appear periodically in the classic cartoons. As a bonus, if you complete the level, you can obtain the Emmentaler, a sword named for the Swiss cheese Emmental. Plus if you dismantle the sword, you also get cheese. Again, the whole concept is silly fun.

Finally, there are games entirely focused on cheese like the 2022 Cheese Game. In the game, you play a sentient piece of cheese while you try to avoid enemies. Sentient objects as a concept are kinda always funny as well. The website Culinary Schools.org has several cheese based games including Stack Cheese, where you try to create the tallest stack of cheese.

Cozy Games

And then cheese naturally shows up in cooking games, like the mobile app Cooking Simulator from Big Cheese Studio or the Cooking Mama games, where people can virtually make popular cheese dishes like mac ‘n cheese, grilled cheese, and pizza. These games tend to be cozy games since there are no enemies to fight (generally) so you can just play with your food. Someday hopefully someone will create a cozy game where you are a cheesemonger trying to run your cheese shop. (Note that there is also a non-virtual card game called Cheesonomics).

Minor explained that these games allow you to do something in virtual spaces that don’t require paying a lot of money. With cooking games, you don’t have to deal with the mess and expense of the food and just focus on the fun and creativity, while looking at food. You get to live vicariously through the game, kinda like when people watch cooking shows or cooking competitions, Minor pointed out.

Plus, cheese is a common ingredient in Western style dishes as well as often associated with comfort food like grilled cheese and mac n’ cheese. Since cheese is both recognizable and tends to connote comfort food, it seems natural that it would show up in cooking games.

A Nod to Gamer Culture from Doritos

Certain foods have been popular among video gaming subcultures, notably Doritos tortilla chips with its legendary cheese flavoring. A love of Doritos is wrapped up with gaming identity, Minor also noted. In a 2023 PR Newswire article, 85% of gamers chose Doritos for snacking. So much so that, Doritos even made Doritos-branded video games free to play on X Box 360 from 2008-2016.

Even more recently, Doritos partnered with Twitch Rivals, a competitive video game event that features Twitch streamers and professional gamers. Doritos made all sorts of digital Doritos branded content, emoticons, chatbots and more for the competitions. It was the presenter for 50 Twitch Rivals tournaments that had over 500,000 unique viewers that resulted in 35 million total views according to Amazon Ads. Other Doritos sponsored events racked up even higher views.

The intertwining of cheesy tortillas and video games is so strong that while gamers love Doritos, they don’t love the noise the chips make. In 2023, Doritos announced that it developed “Crunch Cancellation” software to silence the noise while gaming. So you can have your chips and eat them too.

So while this is not an exhaustive history of video games and cheese, it gives a bit of the history and reasons why cheese may show up in our favorite games.