KuloNiku: Bowl Up
Raw Fury
Prep your stations for a cozy cooking game with attitude! Prepare unique meals for quirky small-town locals, upgrade and customize your shop, compete in thrilling cooking battles to become top chef, and protect your family’s long-running restaurant alongside a cast of curious companions!
KuloNiko: Bowl Up is the new cozy single player cooking game with a competitive twist that makes it stand out compared to the likes of Cook, Serve, Delicious. It blends cooking sim with a dash of life sim to create a game that feels quite unique in the genre and has a lot to offer players. This is a very charming game that’s easy to get into while still having some challenging moments.
A long time ago, Bakuso was a popular restaurant in the small town of Kuloniku, but the original owner passed away. Now, her grandchild has decided to take over and manage the restaurant with the help of a friend they met in college. The player takes control of the restaurant and needs to restore it to its former glory while joining the local tight-knit community.
It’s a simple story and one commonly seen in the life-sim genre; it works well here. More story is unlocked as the game progresses, and it’s revealed there’s a lot more to the town than it first appears. KuloNiku: Bowl Up includes a very eclectic character mix, who all have their own unique stories to discover. Raising your friendship level with them will reveal more of their stories through special illustrations while also unlocking decorations for the restaurant.
Blending cooking with life-sim, this is a simulator with a daily life routine where players need to manage the restaurant during the day and having the option to do things during the night. Mondays and Thursdays are the free time days where players can hang out with their friends or compete in competitions against other local chefs.
Pros
Great cosy mode
Realistic restaurant cooking
Fun meatball brawls cook-off
Quirky colourful world
Brilliant characters
Cons
Requests can feel frustrating at times
Needs a hard mode
Blending cooking with life-sim, this is a simulator with a daily life routine where players need to manage the restaurant during the day and having the option to do things during the night. Mondays and Thursdays are the free time days where players can hang out with their friends or compete in competitions against other local chefs.
The night sections allow the player to travel to the neighbouring store to get new ingredients and items but, but it’s possible to make plans with friends for the next day. It’s even possible to skip some work days to get another free day, but this costs some money. Restaurant planning can also be done at night to instantly change the appearance in different ways or adjust the kitchen placement for convenience.
KuloNiko is very cooking-focused with two different formats: the daily rush and the Meatball Brawls. The daily restaurant cooking is about being as accurate as possible while keeping customers happy by completing their requests in a timely fashion. Meatball Brawls are about appealing to the judges and the public with careful actions and minigame performance overall.
Store customers can make specific requests based on the ingredients available, most of the time, they will ask for the recipes on the menu, but not always. Some will have unique requests, which make things more complicated, and they often get more elaborate over time. Customers have a limited mood gauge that decreases over time, and players need to memorise their order, move quickly in the kitchen and plan out how to deal with cooking it. This definitely gives it a more realistic feel.
Thankfully, this game comes with a Cozy Mode option in the main menu which is great for a more relaxing experience.
Meatball Brawls are not timed and use a turn-based system where the player picks a limited number of ingredients to fill a bowl. The goal is to appeal to the tastes of the judges and take into account what they all like and dislike to create a meal that’s better than the other chef’s. Appealing to everyone when they all have different preferences can be quite tricky at times, but this makes getting the win much more satisfying. There are also special ingredients that are worth bonus points, and appealing to the mood of the audience can also win the round.
Currently I’m only a few hours into KuloNiko: Bowl Up but its definitely a deceptively simple game at times but I think whats most important is you get what you see with this game.. a great cozy feel that makes it easy to play for hours at a time. KuloNiko: Bowl Up is a really fun game to play when you just want to relax and enjoy some good vibes. It has that cozy feeling where you can just sit down, play for a bit, and not stress about anything!
Overall Rating
