KuloNiku Bowl Up! review: a stylish, energetic cooking adventure simulator

KuloNiku: Bowl Up! is a cosy cooking simulator with a difference. While most of the genre chooses to operate in loosely sketched worlds, where gameplay takes priority over artful storytelling, this game meaningfully layers in lore, style and fun characters to encourage your desire to cook.

You have a personal stake in each dish, and in your journey of growth. It’s in the little, sharp details that KuloNiku elevates its tale, delivering a moreish cooking adventure that allows you to become stronger with each narrative obstacle.

A heartfelt and warm plot

As the story begins, you inherit and then choose to reopen an iconic meatball restaurant located in the town of KuloNiku. There are doubts about your talent, given you’ve been away for some time (for wild reasons which play out in the story) so you must prove yourself by serving the townsfolk, one dish at a time.

With shades of classic RPGs, you immediately come up against a loud-mouthed rival, who runs their own restaurant in town. You must put your skills to the test in head-to-head battles and in snappy conversations. You have a right to be in KuloNiku, and the talent to prove everyone wrong.

Each day, you wake up and attend your restaurant, listening to the exact desires of your customers so that you can create perfect dishes that elevate your reputation, grow your coffers and eventually advance your food offerings.

Cooking your way to the top

There is precision and challenge in meeting each restaurant order, which creates friction that lifts the overall gameplay. You’re not simply cooking dumplings and noodles. A customer may request any number of customisations, from flavour profiles to specific utensils.

Any ingredient you add to a dish changes the flavour profile – and some flavours may clash. As the game advances, you’re expertly balancing ingredients while also paying attention to the ingredient limit. There are only so many things you can put in a dish to find the right flavours, and certain requests have only one correct combination of ingredients. You need to pay attention and make sharp choices.

This complex system also plays well into the game’s cooking battles, which help to spice up the everyday action. On certain days, and at the request of certain characters, you can take part in a Meatball Brawl – a high-energy cooking competition where difficult requests are made for flavourful, creative meatball soups.

In each round, you must meet a vague mission brief, using what you’ve learned of meatball soup-making and your own creativity to add ingredients that will satisfy fussy judges. There’s pressure here, as you only have limited moves to make, but that ebb and flow of relaxing, cosy gameplay and more intense competitive battles ensures KuloNiku: Bowl Up! feels consistently surprising and dynamic.

A world of charming friends

What adds to the game’s dynamism is a lovely cast of characters, each with their own levelling up systems and unlockables. You meet an array of folks in your travels, from hostile rivals to helpful pals, and each has their own relationship metre.

Between rounds of cooking, you can choose how you spend your time – relaxing, decorating, purchasing new ingredients or decorations, or visiting a range of locations to build your friendships with each character.

Get to know them, and you’ll unlock new explorable locations and dialogue options, as well as more of the game’s overarching story. You’ll also get funny little vignettes and heartfelt character moments that reveal more about life in KuloNiku, and that flesh out your purpose and place in its world. That’s the magic of KuloNiku: Bowl Up!

On the surface, it’s easy to understand. It’s a robust cooking simulator with a strong progression system that consistently introduces new ingredients, cooking styles, mechanics and challenges. But KuloNiku: Bowl Up! is really about the art of cooking and how it brings people together.

It offers a bright, cosy and very stylish anime-inspired world to explore, with plenty of opportunities to really entrench yourself in its world. It also offers a cosy space to spend time cooking (timed or freeform, it’s your choice) as a more peaceful, mindful exercise.

In a world of swift movement, KuloNiku: Bowl Up! is an opportunity to take a well-earned cosy gameplay break, but one that allows for consistent achievement and a real sense of satisfying progression.

A PC code for KuloNiku: Bowl Up! was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.

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