Enough of the backlog, it is time to play some of the games that I bought recently. It is as hot outside as it would be in a restaurant kitchen, so why wouldn’t I play a game about cooking meatballs and try to bring a community together?

This week is Kuloniku: Bowl Up!

KuloNiku: Bowl Up! is a cooking game from Gambir Studio and Raw Fury. The game was released on Steam on April 7th, 2026, and retails for $12.

Nestled deep within a remote location is the meatball-themed small town of KuloNiku. The town is bustling with people, even so that it has its own extremely colorful entertainment district. Your grandmother has been a pillar of the community for as long as she has lived in the town with Bakuso, and there has been a hole ever since she left, to the point that it is not about community but about how much money can be made! A town based on meatballs is bound to have extreme competition, and there are seemingly infinite meatball restaurants that the new owner of Bakuso has to fight through to become the best and reinstate the focus on community. The story is heartwarming, especially when talking to and learning about the people who populate the town, but it gets a little goofy down the road. Still incredibly enjoyable.

KuloNiku starts the player off right, onboarding them on how the kitchen works and how to make a handful of dishes that involve meatballs, noodles, and seasonings. Everything related to cooking, like putting ingredients in the pot, cutting veggies, and adding seasonings, is done with the mouse. It is fun to pluck a meatball and noodles from a tin and watch them fly into the hot pot. Cutting veggies like fish cake, chilis, and green onions is simple, but I found it so fun and satisfying, especially when you upgrade to cutting more than one at a time.

Playing sessions early on were incredibly fun because I would enter a flow state, making these bowls, ignoring the timer, and focusing on making money to spend on better ingredients, decorations, recipes, or even kitchen upgrades. The upgrades, like a bigger pot to cook more food, or more bowls to spend less time washing, really help get timing down so your customers do not have to wait long for their food, and are super helpful and translate really well into the gameplay.

KuloNiku starts off cozy, but the game stopped being cozy when I entered my grill station era. Customers used to give me simple orders, but now I have to actively write them down! It used to be one or two sentences! Now they are telling me a literal paragraph. Pressing Shift opens the recipe menu, and Space opens up the order. Kuloniku‘s main mechanic of giving dishes a flavor profile is really smart. In the laundry list of customers’ requests, it will sometimes say “slightly sweet” or “Very Sour,” and as the chef, you have to heed their requests or risk making no money. The mixing and matching really keep the player on their toes, so they are ready for anything. A nice addition to the gameplay is the festivals, where stipulations are given to earn some extra money, vouchers and earn some reputation to battle in Meatball Brawls.

Customers come in and hint at foods and recipes they would like to see, and the realization sets in that making the same old food can get boring. Kuloniku gives the player the freedom to upgrade whatever dishes they want to make more money and please the populace. The mini-games are a little boring to play, but the end result lets the player earn more money and expand their culinary repertoire.

This is where the meat of the game begins.

Obviously, owning a restaurant steals all your time, and Kuloniku continues that trend by letting the player choose an activity to spend their days off. Relationship building with other characters, spending money, or participating in Meatbrawls to progress the main story.

Lights, camera, action, and the player is in front of a crowd, cooking to save the community from one brawl after another. The trick here is that during these Meatbrawls, KuloNiku becomes turn-based, and everything now has a mini-game attached to it. The player has three action points, and everything counts as an action, so planning your attack is the best way to achieve a win. It is nerve-wracking to see that one judge did not like the pickled bok choy that I added, but both loved it when I added chili sauce. Meatbrawls are truly a different experience from the hustle and bustle of the restaurant, but the technical skill of crafting a dish that all of the judges will love is equal parts fun and challenge.

The customization options are right at home in KuloNiku. I spent so much time looking at wall/ceiling graphics, themed tables/counters/kitchen, to come up with a goofy restaurant that I was happy with. There are a lot of options, and it is nice to spend some time decorating.

Kuloniku is such a colorful game, very pleasant to look at. I like the big-city look in a small town, with lots of color, popping ads, streetlights, and very loud-looking buildings. Big fan of the two or three songs that play during the game. Just enough to get by.

When there is a town whose main export is meatball bowls, there have to be some eccentric people who live there, and KuloNiku has a wide range of characters to talk to and get to know better. Everyone is so cute, I love their designs. I actually like the characters a lot; their personal lives feel incredibly real. Cassie, the pink-haired woman who joins the player on their adventure, is the “cool big sister” who tries to take care of them and can sometimes be a little overwhelming. Ume, the quiet, shy bookworm who dresses in all black and whose family is pro-extreme activities like climbing Everest, is the head of the store the player buys from. It makes spending the night to schedule a hangout session or “deepen the relationship” worth it on both narrative and gameplay levels, as it rewards the player with incredibly useful upgrades like extra crafting, hangout spots, recipes, etc.

KuloNiku: Bowl Up is an absolute joy to play, though I stumbled a lot on the longer orders. I loved booting the game up to cook up food that always, ALWAYS made me hungry. I love the Meatbrawls, to the point where I was writing down what each judge liked to achieve the perfect 10. I still do not think I understand the points system, but I am okay with it. The characters are cute, funny, and relatable in some manner. The game is visually pleasing. I really like that the town just worships meatballs. The game understands what it wants to be and excels at it.

8/10