REVIEW: ‘KuloNiku: Bowl Up!’ Is Delightfully Cozy And Ridiculous In The Best Ways

If you like coziness, cooking battles, and just being a general slinger of meatballs, KuloNiku: Bowl Up! will certainly fill that specific niche (and make you incredibly hungry in the process). Developed by Gambir Game Studio and published by Raw Fury, this PC cozy cooking game is a fun time-suck that easily allows you to fall into a routine of managing a meatball noodles restaurant, further complemented by adorable anime-inspired characters that are just too cute for words.

In KuloNiku: Bowl Up!, you play as the new owner of Bakuso, a meatball noodle restaurant your grandmother previously ran before her passing. You get to choose between two different avatars before embarking on your journey to reopening and re-establishing Bakuso in the community of KuloNiku. It’s an eccentric sort of community, with many of the characters you run across having a devotion, sometimes verging on obsession, in the culinary arts and, well, meatballs. 

This devotion culminates in what is dubbed the Meatball Brawl. This brawl is a huge event, typically taking place two times a week, where you go up against a challenger, usually a restaurant owner, and compete in three rounds. These brawls differ slightly from your usual restaurant routine.

Actions like boiling, spicing, and frying have a minigame component that keeps you on your toes. Note: if you’re using a touchpad mouse, as I did, there might be a slight learning curve with the frying mini game’s right-click mouse component when you’re first starting out.

The cooks of KuloNiku take their meatballs seriously, but you don’t always have to engage in the Brawls. 

These brawls are how you boost your ranking on the Leaderboard in the community and, sometimes, tie into the broader story at hand in KuluNiku: Bowl Up! The real magic, though, happens in your daily routine at Bakuso. If you choose to play with Cozy Mode off (the game’s main accessibility feature), the timer will be active while you try to cook the ordered dish as quickly as possible. Speed is the name of the game, as customers can become impatient and cranky if you wait too long. But speed can’t make up for incorrect orders. 

The easiest route to success is by listening to your customers. Mind you, some of them will have pretty insane requests, like ordering a soup dish with “soup” in the title but asking you to hold the soup. This moment is, sadly, typical of the restaurant experience, with customers frequently adjusting menu items to suit their tastes.

As in real life, if you mess up their orders, they will get upset and demand refunds. So, as ridiculous as some requests might seem in KuloNiku: Bowl Up!, if you want to grow your rep, you’ll have to get them right.

For full disclosure, I did play a decent chunk of KuloNiku: Bowl Up! with the Cozy Mode on. With Cozy Mode turned on, the timer component is disabled. This does make it easier to prepare your dishes at your own pace, especially if, like me, you have mobility issues in your hands and wrists that slow you down. Also, if timers stress you out, the option to remove that component becomes an immediate blessing. There is also an option to turn vibration on for those who require that feature.

Much of your time in KuloNiku: Bowl Up! is spent at Bakuso, where you fall into a cozy, cooking routine.

The more you build your reputation, the more you move the story forward. This can lead to story-specific character interactions both inside and outside the restaurant. Sometimes this can also lead to receiving free new equipment that helps you expand your menu and learn new skills, further enhancing Bakuso’s reputation. However, don’t expect to receive things for free all the time in KuloNiku: Bowl Up! You are making money, after all, by cooking delicious dishes for the community.

One of the characters, Ume, runs her parents’ shop, aptly titled Ume’s Shop. It’s here in KuloNiku: Bowl Up! that you can find ingredients, decorations, and special items to improve your restaurant. Every Friday in-game, the shop replaces the items with newer, trendier ones, so it is recommended that if you want something, you buy it as soon as you think you have the funds. You might not see it again in Ume’s Shop because trends come and go quickly. 

With the items you purchase to decorate your store, you can play around with the look of your restaurant. There are additional variations of the item you’ve purchased when you go to decorate, which is pretty cool. It will cost you additional money from what you’ve earned if you decide to upgrade your items in the Decoration section.

While the options may seem kind of limited in terms of full-breadth customization, they do give you a chance to upgrade your restaurant to something close to what you’d like. Another upside is that decorating your restaurant can have long-term financial benefits by increasing customer satisfaction, as reflected in tips received.

Character interactions not only strengthen relationships but can help you in the Meatball Brawls!

When you buy ingredients from Ume’s Shop, you’ll open up more opportunities to craft different new recipes in the Crafting section of KuloNiku: Bowl Up! There are three different crafting levels, with Level 2 only being unlocked by deepening your relationship with Cassie to a certain level as Bakuso’s co-owner.

To craft a successful recipe, you only need the appropriate ingredients, but you also need to pass the mini-game. Level 1 minigames in this section are easier, but once you start tackling the higher-level recipes, the margin for messing up only grows.

Speaking of deepening relationships, you also get a chance to interact and foster relationships with key characters in KuloNiku: Bowl Up! You do only have two days off any given week, Mondays and Thursdays. If you aren’t MeatBrawling it up on one of those days, you can use those days to develop your connection with players. These opportunities also open up new places for you to hang out around the community, such as the Arcade, the Mall, or a local park, giving you more variety for future hangout sessions.

There is one caveat to this. If you want to hang out and it’s not the day before Monday or Thursday, you can skip the rest of the week and go directly to that day to unlock that activity. The downside is that you miss out on opportunities to earn additional income and boost your reputation if you choose to skip ahead.

Depending on what you’re hoping to get from this cozy adventure, the choice is yours. Similarly, if there is a non-story-related Brawl opponent waiting for you outside of the TV Station, you can choose to skip ahead in the week to do that on your day off.

Yes, it hurts to spend money, but each dollar spent helps Bakuso grow.

With the addition of Festival days later in KuloNiku: Bowl Up!, it sometimes becomes even harder to justify skipping ahead. Each Festival day presents a different challenge for players, adding a specific theme to each order.

These days allow you to earn more money, earn vouchers, strengthen friendships, and further elevate your rep in the community. However, depending on the theme, you need to be on your A-game. Any mistake can make it difficult to take full advantage of what these Festival days have to offer.

One thing that becomes hard to notice as you further progress in KuloNiku: Bowl Up! is that there are some repetitious bits of dialogue, particularly from the NPCS in the restaurant. Sometimes, there are also dialogue bits that feel out of place, like with the Granny NPC who talks like a child, and who sometimes repeats the same dialogue as another younger NPC character who frequents the restaurant. 

Repetition isn’t always bad, but it becomes more of a concern in the moments when you get to chat with your friends outside the restaurant after you’re done for the night. These mini-conversations can sometimes be our only opportunities in the game to talk with the characters we want, without waiting until our days off. Oftentimes,  you find yourself having the same conversation with them again, which can make it a little easier to tune out and, ultimately, connect with the moment at hand. More variety might help here in future updates. 

At the end of the day, everything in KuloNiku: Bowl Up! ties into the joy of meatballs and cooking.

There is also a minor sensitivity quirk with certain in-game keyboard and mouse controls. Sometimes, if you accidentally click outside a dialogue box, it might disappear, but clicking again restores it.

Also, be mindful of how often you use the Left Shift key when checking the recipe book, as you might accidentally activate the Sticky Key function. It’s easy enough to avoid, but if you forget in the heat of cooking and fall into that ebb and flow of routine, it can definitely take you out of it.

KuloNiku: Bowl Up! is a delightfully cozy cooking game filled with mouthwatering recipes, fun character designs, and an intriguing, slow-burning story that unfolds at its own pace. It can be easy enough to fall into a daily routine of cooking, chatting, and upping your game. However, there’s something more going on in this crazy town that you’ll just have to crack yourself. But first, you’ve got to make delicious food for the town and make Bakuso great.

KuloNiku: Bowl Up! is now available to play on Steam.