Slow Burn is one of the many stories under Pixelberry's Choices: Stories You Play collection. The last of the original VIP books, it is finally released for all players on August 19, 2022.
In this book, an aspiring chef teams up with a world-famous chef to help struggling restaurants throughout the world.
Tropes in this book
- Absurdly High-Stakes Game: After Ainsley is fired, Flynt manages to make a deal with Zara: if Flynt and Ainsley win their cooking duel with Antoine, Ainsley gets to keep their job.
- Alliterative Name: The default name for the main character is Ainsley Addams.
- Angry Chef: Chef Flynt is hotheaded, passionate, and highly-strung. One time, they punched a cake because it wouldn't rise properly.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Chef Flynt calls out the culinary producer for making what would be worthy of a three star Michelin restaurant... if it wasn't being done for a greasy spoon restaurant.
- Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce: Ainsley can have Chef Flynt throw in ghost peppers to make a very spicy pasta sauce.
- Catapult Nightmare: Chapter 2 has Ainsley waking up from their flight to New Orleans from a nightmare about burning down the restaurant they were helping Chef Flynt rescue and being called a no-name cook.
- Character Customization: You get to decide Ainsley's looks as well as gender, but also Chef Everett/Yvette Flynt and the Restaurateur Julian/Julia Navarro.
- Cooking Duel: Chef Flynt had been on one of these in-universe called "The Knife's Edge," butting heads with rival Antoine Duval until they pulled a Screw This, I'm Outta Here, along with a Noodle Incident of them telling him "You crossed the line." Antoine later starts a new show called “Creme de la Cream” involving just that.
- Deadpan Snarker: Ainsley choosing Sassy options puts them in this personality set.
- Developers' Desired Date: Chef Flynt is the preferred love intererest in this book, not only because Ainsley is their assistant, but also because they have more romantic options and premium scenes than Navarro.
- End of an Era: This is the final Choices book to be released under the original VIP program, with the new VIP program (which involves releasing every new Choices book as VIP before releasing it to everybody a couple of months later) beginning with Shipwrecked (released the month after the VIP release of this book ended).
- Five Stages of Grief: Chapters 2 and 3 are this for Karl Picou and it's been hurting his business. Denial is getting rid of anything relating to his dead mother, including using her recipes. Anger is even bringing her up, and when Ainsley and Chef Flynt start cooking her old recipes, he throws them out of the kitchen and his restaurant. He bargains that he watched his mother dying from cancer to the point she couldn't even eat her own food and if she couldn't enjoy it, nobody should. Going with the premium scene to develop new recipes with Chef Flynt helps him get into the depression stage when the chili they make tears him up, reminding him of his mother, and acceptance when he allows them to use her recipes.
- Food Porn: The food in the book is so lovingly detailed and described like something from Vanilla Ware.
- Gone Horribly Right: For the season finale, Zara announces that they would be helping one of Antoine’s restaurants for more drama. Not only does things spiral out of control, Antoine reveals he only allowed them to film to promote his new show.
- Great Big Book of Everything: Ainsley wants to make a cookbook of these, starting with the pasta they made with Chef Flynt.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Chef Flynt has one, Ainsley is able to act as a calming influence on them.
- So does Fahim Loudani, the restaurant owner in Morocco in Chapters 8 and 9.
- Hate Sink: Zara Vyas, the showrunner of "Taste of the World", is established as this from Chapter 6 onwards, as she tries to force Ainsley to provoke Flynt to create more drama, just so the ratings for the show will go up, and this almost destroys the relationship between Ainsley and Flynt.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: As with all Choices characters, you can name your character, the default name being Ainsley Addams.
- Internal Reveal: Chapter 8 has Flynt finding out that Zara was trying to get Aisnely to provoke them and create more drama.
- Pointy-Haired Boss: Doug Bloom is this, feeling Ainsley should just go in the back, cook, and not even so much as talk to Chef Flynt.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: After Zara fires Aisnley in Chapter 14, they can take a premium option to give her a piece of their mind.
- The Reveal: Chapter 13 finally reveals how Antoine “crossed the line”: Antoine had been seeing Flynt’s then fiance at time, and Flynt promptly lost it at that revelation.
- Revisiting the Roots: Chapter 2 has Chef Flynt go back to the restaurant they worked at when they were younger in New Orleans, only to learn the hard truth that it's been closed down.
- Shipper on Deck: Ainsley can set up Vivian, the show’s head of restaurant redesign with Hudson the head handyman who are both architecture nerds.
- Sickening Sweethearts: Chef Flynt feels Amalia and Demi are this if they go on the double date in Chapter 4 when Ainsley gets them remembering their first date.
- Slobs vs. Snobs: Antoine Duval is the rich, elitist professionally trained snob to Chef Flynt's slob who learned to cook through family-owned restaurants.
- Stage Name: Chapter 10 reveals that Flynt’s real last name is Ramparsad.
- Stepford Smiler: A premium scene in Chapter 2 has Karl Picou, the owner of Hushpuppy's, realize that even though his sister Adele's been all smiles, she's just as sad that their mother is gone.
- The Topic of Cancer: Bernadette Picou died of Stage IV gastric cancer, which was caught too late.
- Wham Episode: Chapter 9. After learning about Zara’s deal with Ainsley, Flynt loses control in the restaurant and stomps back to the hotel, refusing to come back in time for the critic. No matter how filming ends, it’s not good when Ainsley returns to the hotel only to learn Flynt left the country, putting the show in jeopardy.
