As someone who enjoys cooking, I haven’t touched cooking-type games. That is, until I came across KuloNiku: Bowl Up! This is a story-based cooking game where you inherit your grandmother’s noodle shop. I love noodles, so this caught my attention. After a few hours, I’m enjoying the cooking aspects of the game, but the rest of the game isn’t holding my attention.
Becoming the best Noodle Chef in town
The story here revolves around Bakuso, a well-known noodle shop. The place was once run by your grandmother, a popular noodle chef. Now that you’re in charge, you will have to prove your worth and aim to surpass her pedigree.
To start, you have a few basic recipes and a small kitchen to work with. You have a small Hotpot cooking area and a topping and serving station. Over time, you’ll expand these areas with more ingredients, toppings, and other items. On top of that, you’ll also have opportunities to expand your kitchen so you can cook other items.
Cooking involves first taking their order, then making the food based on what they ask for. At the start, your limited ingredients mean you’ll be making the same thing. However, no one ever orders from the menu as is, so that’s where the game will throw “curve balls” at you.
Make it spicy, but not too spicy.
This is where the game becomes challenging. Every customer is picky, and it will either revolve around a specific item or flavor profile. Someone might want the Meatball Twist, but they want it to be extra sour. Another person might come in wanting it to be extra spicy, but they don’t want any noodles. There are even times when a customer might go off menu and ask for a dish with different ingredients. It’s up to you to get it right so you maximize your tips and customer satisfaction.
To do this, you need to go beyond the requirements for each dish. If someone wants their dish to be sour, you’ll have to add something extra to make it so. Early on, dishes have two or three items. As long as you follow their instructions, there is no penalty for adding extra items. So, if you add Fish Cakes because it helps your dish hit a flavor profile, that’s fine. But, if they ask you not to include something, you had best not have it anywhere near the bowl.
While I never found making a required dish difficult, timing does play a factor. If you take too long, the customer will always comment on this. So, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the menu to make sure you know what each dish requires. If you notice you cook a particular way, the game does allow you to move the kitchen sections around to help. I didn’t bother moving things around, since I liked the setup as they gave it to you.
Expanding your menu is key
With a small menu to start, you will be cooking the same dish for the first bit of the game. You will have chances to expand the menu. Unfortunately, it’s locked behind buying the necessary ingredients and progressing the story.
You buy ingredients through the shop next door. There, they sell you both ingredients and elements to expand and improve your shop. Things are not cheap, so it will take time to earn what you need. They only have six items up for sale each week, so you do need to be smart about what you buy. At the start, I’ve been focusing on buying ingredients and any upgrades to my kitchen. When I had the chance to expand my dishes, I jumped on it.
You can only create the new dishes once you’ve hit specific story beats. For example, I have all the ingredients for a new dish, but I don’t have a strong enough bond with one of the characters. Since I don’t have that yet, I have to slog through until I make enough conversation progress. This feels random, so I’m not sure how long it takes to increase your friendships.
A story I’m not invested in
A major story beat is trying to become the best noodle chef in town. When you reach enough store reputation, you will get a challenge from an NPC. This then puts you two in a competition, Meatball Brawl. The cook who scores the highest wins.
At first, these contests seem fun. They give each cook the same requirements and tools to cook a dish to the judge’s specifications. Every contest will have some extra ingredients that can earn you bonus points. These are key to victory, so you’ll want to incorporate them to get the best score.
But the first four challenges have been super easy. The first one serves as a tutorial, but the next three have been walks in the park. I even managed to get a max score on the third challenge while my opponent finished with three points. I understand that this is still early in the game, but I was hoping for a bit more of a challenge.
Too much repetition hurts the experience
With a large part of the game tied to story progression, I was getting bored. They introduce a few changes to mix it up, but it doesn’t make a drastic change. For example, on Saturdays, you can take part in a Food Festival. On that day, you’ll get more customers, but you’ll have specific requirements for your dishes that day. Get them right, and you’ll earn bonus cash or other prizes.
Also, the story only progresses after completing those challenges. You can’t do a challenge until you reach the max store satisfaction level. Meanwhile, challenges can only happen twice a week. So there might be a few days between reaching the required level and taking part in the contest. You can skip days to speed this up. But then you miss out on making more money than you would have if you had cooked your self those days.
Because of the pacing, I would recommend playing shorter sessions. When I was only playing this for 10-15 minutes, I didn’t feel bored. This wouldn’t have been a problem had there been more variety early on.
Give me more to work with
I would have had a lot more fun with KuloNiku: Bowl Up! if the game had given you more freedom early on and focused more on cooking. The story aspects, especially the characters you interact with, hold the game back. If they ever bother to include a cooking-only mode, I would be willing to give this game another chance.
