Culina: Hands in the Kitchen

[i]Culina: Hands in the Kitchen[/i] is a visual novel with light business-sim elements. The story was enjoyable, the art and music are great, but the business aspect is somewhat lacking. Coupled with the tedious process of restocking your inventory after each time you let customers into the restaurant, it almost gets in the way of the visual novel aspects. On the other hand, the simplicity means you don't have to worry too much about the imposed weekly profit goals. Additionally, increasing your relationships gives bonuses to the business interactions, so the parts do interact well with each other. Recommended for people who like a little time management in their visual novels. 7/10.

This game is not great. It is easy to find simple recipies that will maximise your income and there is little incentive to increase your skills or search for more advanced recipes. After 8 hours, the game ends abruptly with a minimalistic scenario. I would pay $5 for an afternoon of fun, not $20.

I don't normally play these types of games but this one caught my eye. I bought it on a whim and can honestly say I don't regret the purchase. I'm only about 3 hours in so far on my first playthrough but the game has turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Some things worth mentioning: Nice overall aesthetic. The UI, text boxes, menus, etc all have nice clean lines. For a game that requires a lot of text reading, it never becomes an eyesore. Very nice character design. I personally like the more realistic approach they took as opposed to some of the outrageous over the top visual designs of other games. The sim restaurant has some depth to it (more than I expected). Ranging from a variety of ingredients to unlock, to increasing your seating capacity, adding aditional menu options, advertising to attract different kinds of customers, etc all while balancing cost-performance to make a profit at the end of the week. The weekly goals make it somewhat challenging and this is what sets the game apart from other visual novels in that there is more here than simply clicking "next" from start to finish. Nice dialogue. The story is well-written and never comes off as goofy or immature (thus far at least). Nekopara this is NOT. The protagonist is completely relatable to (a credit to the writers). Overall, a solid effort from this developer and one I would recommend.

Culina bring to life the very rare mix of Visual Novel and Kitchen Sim. While not perfect or very in depth, they work pretty well together. The game seems to use its own engine built in Unity, considering the mix of games it's probably for the better but some usual VN functions are missing. [b]Characters/Story[/b] This is probably where the game is at its best, it is a very down to earth story and characters are believable while still being interesting. They are also intertwined one way or another so while meeting one character you might also learn a bit about another. It is more interesting than characters almost not existing at all if you don't interact with them. While the main goal is running your Kitchen, there is some romance available but you can decide to simply stay friend and are not forced into a romance. [b]Sound and Music[/b] There is no voice acting and the music, while not bad, seems pretty generic for a Visual Novel. You can change the music in the Kitchen, between 5 tracks I think, and since you spend a lot of time there it's a nice feature. Nothing much more to say here. [b]Gameplay[/b] The game last for [spoiler]4[/spoiler] weeks with a bonus prequel story available once you play the game once. The first week is kind of an introduction where you learn the mechanics and meet the characters so it is short gameplay wise but last a while. For the rest of the game each week is kind of longer since there are more ingredients added and you can upgrade your Restaurant to have more customers and recipes availables. The recipe system is simple but allow you to do pretty much anything you want without restrictions. Ingredients have stats that get added but nothing stop you from mixing ingredients that would not work well together. I don't think ingredients have any disadvantages so you can stick with a mix that work well and keep it the whole game while creating new recipes for new types of customers. It is simple but allow you to focus more on the visual novel part. It can be a bit hard though until you find what works well because each week has a profit requirements for story reasons. But if you save at the beginning of each week they last about one hour each so you can quickly redo your week while skipping text you already saw. Your character has stats that you can upgrade by studing and they get added to the recipes but it does not seems to matter much compared to the ingredients themselves. The visual novel parts actually give you from time to time free ingredients, discounts or even new special ingredients so it is nice that both part of the game are well mixed together. [b]Visual[/b] It is another nice part of the game, it looks pretty unique, characters are realistic but not boring. I think all characters have two costumes, one casual and one for work, and there is a good amount of backgrounds even though you will spend a lot of time in the Restaurant. Characters are also slighty animated, make it seems like they are breathing I would say, not a lot but it's a nice addition that is quite uncommon. It is overall bright and colorful, even ingredients all have a visual. [b]Conclusion[/b] The price might be a bit high considering one playthrough might not be that long but there is a lot of replayability possible with the multiple characters to meet and how open the recipes system is. The recipe system might be a bit too open, once you find a good recipe it is always good, there is no randomisation in customers need as far as I could see, at best a few different customers will show if you reload a save but in a whole week it is very minimal. It is a pretty solid Visual Novel with a simple but decent Kitchen Sim.

It's a fun game, but it seems largely unpolished and way overcharged. I got five hours or so of play out of it, completed Dante's route, and realized I'd probably never play again. Good idea, mediocre execution. You're better off paying less for a much more finished product.

I backed this on Kickstarter and was excited about it for a long time. I hadn't actually followed the development that closely, though? I just wanted a cooking/kitchen-themed dating sim. The dating sim part is pretty good. I thought the job interviews for the characters were a unique way to introduce them. But the recipe making part is tedious and annoying, and I hadn't realized how much of the game was dependent on it. I wish there was an option to skip that whole mechanic. I just wanted to play a dating sim, not run around to dozens of shops grabbing ingredients and trying to figure out the puzzle of what customers like what and the math of making sure I have enough money. I play dating sims to be lazy and enjoy a love story, and this aspect ruined the game for me. Running around town to shops all day meant that I missed out on scenes with my love interests because I wasn't spending time with them in the restaurant in order to trigger their flags. I wish there was a middle rating option... I think this is a case of "decent game, just not for me." If you like dating sims with an extra gameplay mechanic and that sounds fun for you, you'll probably like this. But if you are looking for something more straightforward, like I was, you're going to be annoyed.

This game is, quite frankly, impossible. It is unbalanced, and dull to boot. Even if you start off with the moneybags code, you will still lose more than you make. Ingredients cost an arm and a leg, and your parents take so much money from you after that that you may as well start selling your kidneys too. It really prevents you from enjoying the recipe creation at all, since you have to sweat over the cost of every single ingredient and usually have to default to the cheapest options possible. Which still isn't enough to help you scrape up enough to keep your head above water. There's a dating sim aspect to the game, but you have no time to enjoy it in the struggle to just survive. I like cooking in games. I like dating sims. But this game fails at both.

As a fan of indie/sim VN's, I purchased this game as soon as I saw it. However, it feels repetitive and not worth the $20 I paid..

The story is pretty good to the point. The writing feels good, and the art is nice 'n clean. I enjoyed the restaurant management part. Though, it's on the pretty simple side so don't except it to be deep. The only thing I don't have a real opinion is the price point. First or so visual novel I've played so don't know.

So, I am looking at my old library and ... well, might as well post something. I was one of the Kickstarter backers, that is how I got it. This game wasn't updated in last 10 years, so it is unlikely something changed. What I remember is that I liked the idea, but it just wasn't implamented properly. I like character design, it is very wholesome. But game was frustrating enough that I never bothered to finish it. So yea ... in retrospect, it would probably be nice if it could be just a simple dating sim, that is simple and that works. But it is not. Also ... it is 20 €? Ambitious.