Kooeh: A Timeless Delight

[b][u]Update[/u][/b] Just played around with the changes from the latest patch and while I will leave my review as is, I want to acknowledge the dev teams active efforts to make improvements. The clunkiness is much improved. The stove is still a little touchy with picking up cooked meals but you can now hold items in your hand and interact with the stove and cash, making multitasking easier. The mini games are still a little frustrating. Just not a fan of them in general. Wish there was just something that emulated cooking along with the button smashing. I would like to see an option to maybe set a menu because there are so many ingredients to keep up with. Sometimes I run out of them and customers still order dishes that I cannot make. Or another solution would be that customers cannot order dishes that cannot be made. I also sometimes lose track of what/how many prepared meals are on the counter in the storage tray. Being able to check your stock would be helpful to plan. In addition, having some downtime before opening or at close for meal prep would help juggle staying on top of demand, especially for those recipes that take longer to cook. You can now turn away customers when you don’t have their order, which is an improvement but I would like to see an option to either serve other customers in line while the first one waits or be able to see what they want to order so I can plan a bit better. The updates are a nice start but I would like to see more QoL features implemented for smoother gameplay before I recommend this. [i]See my old review below…[/i] I really wanted to recommend this little wholesome treat, but unfortunately the clunkiness makes it hard to juggle the storefront and oncoming traffic. I was able to look past it in the demo because I assumed that some upgrades were just needed to speed things up, but the unnecessary back and forth prevents you from multitasking which (for me at least) is a pretty fundamental aspect of a management style game. As the game progresses, you just end up bottlenecked and losing revenue because everything is running too slowly. Which in turn, makes it hard to upgrade anything to improve the flow of things. The gameplay loop is simple but has the potential to be satisfying. You unlock new recipes and add them to the menu by completing mini games. I tried it on both PC and steam deck and the button smashing is just very sensitive. I find myself getting frustrated because I am missing beats that I feel like I am hitting, making for an unenjoyable experience for a supposed "cozy" game. The day starts with collecting your ingredients and opening up shop. You are given no time to prep meals before hand which is where the slow down starts. The cooking times are ridiculously long. The only saving grace being that unbought meals stay in your serving tray and do not spoil. But my main gripe is that when you pick up the prepared meal off the stove, you cannot immediately start cooking a new one. You need to drop off the cooked meal to the serving tray and then go back to the stove to start cooking another meal. How are you supposed to multitask if you can never do more than one action at a time? Similarly, if you have the food item in your hand, you cannot just serve it to the customer at the counter. You need to place it on the serving tray and then go back to the counter to serve the customer. You can also only serve the customer at the front of the counter. So if you have a line up, and have the orders ready in the tray for the other customers but not the customer at the front of the line, well... I guess no one is getting served >.< So the backlog continues... The day is ended with the opportunity to upgrade and add equipment but I don't think adding more stoves is going to help here. It seems silly to complain about but once you get swamped with customers, you will discover how it just becomes overwhelming because you can't do anything to manage the situation any better given the limitations of gameplay. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this game in it's current state. Cute concept undeniably, but it feels like a mobile game that doesn't equip you with the right tools to succeed.

Its cute, but it still needs work. its hard to select the stations even when I'm facing them and i have to wiggle my character to be able to interact with the stations again. (start cooking, wiggle and fine right angle to interact again AFTER its done cooking. Sell to customer, wiggle and find angle again to sell to next customer) Its a little frustrating and time consuming. Also, there is no telling the customer that we cant sell them the food or drink they want because we were out of ingredients. So you have to sit there and stare at them until their timer runs out before you can help the rest that have been sitting in line and some even want the same thing that we cant cook. Love the simple art and designs but the gameplay needs help. At this point and time, I do not recommend playing until it updates and becomes more flushed out.

I want to thank the devs for giving me a free key to the full game but I have to be honest, I agreed with many of the reviews here. As much as I'm a Malaysian and I want to like the game for what it is, it's hard. It just feels everything is too slow and you need to grind a lot to do anything and to me, this is not cozy for me at all. It's stressful and I wish you can change that. This is even when I grinded some money to upgrade the stove and it still feels like it doesn't speed up at all And it doesn't help when I need to stand at a certain angle at the stove or tray to interact and this would make me lose a customer by the time I can serve them. I can only hope you can find a fix for it since it will only annoy players when they want to quickly interact with the stove or tray

Overall game is cute and the characters were interesting with their own stories to tell. Artwork was the best part about the game and got to learn foods from that part of the world. The game doesn't tell you can scroll into the kitchen, which would be useful as a lot of dishes were beige and two pink drinks looked so similar. The mini games are quite hard even on normal difficulty dishes. The upgrades scaling costs are so far apart and you have the step by step upgrade system which feels more punishing than chill. I couldn't play anymore since it was a pain to continue. Quality of life changes that would be nice: - Image of dish on the cooking pots, often forget what's in each one or cooking double by accident. - Able to cook the new recipes after buying them, instead of waiting until end of shift. - Adjust the customer waiting time according to the dishes. It has been impossible to serve the dishes that took the most time because all customers have the default timer and have to end pre-making dishes but ends up wasting money if not ordered at in one shift. - In the wishing tree to have the total number of ingredients listed by the picture. The UI to navigate to the item tab to check quantities feels tedious and not in any particular order, ie. alphabetical, etc. - List recipes with their star rating.

Here's my very valid complaints that I'm wondering who tested this and said this was fine? 1. Controls: It is actually really slow and frustrating. I could barely do two-three days before giving up. Like range of movement was so limited, like I was straining my own wasd keys to just move. in truth - this is my biggest complaint 2. I can't even stock up before the shift? Look man, I know you know that even the aunties and shops making actual kueh do this like early as in the morning and stocks up, not making this like on the spot. I mean fine sure yeah I see what you're doing which is like similar to diner dash and other games that serves food and stuff. but the wait time is really stressful 3. which brings me back to like the food, like it's super damn pain in the rear end to make the more time consuming dishes cause the customers are immediately waiting and if i got no stock, I lose profit. And yes the stove's sense is weird, like you have to be at an angle. (I recommend that the stove be allowed to immediately send the food over OR you can cue whatever dishes you want) Or you increase the quantity of food produced. Like if you make Vadai, you get like 5 pieces. time taken - more stock. 4. story can be brushed up, like from what I played, it feels very one dimensional. the good 1. Look, I'm Malaysian, I wanna see you guys succeed, I do not want to give you a bad review and please take this as someone who really genuinely wants to see this work. I played stuff like Moonlighter and Diner Dash, so yeah I like this sort of thing. 2. the art is VERY nice, and very cute. I like it, it works. the technical can be polished. please do not give up.

I was looking for a new cozy game to play and I love this game so far. I feel like it does need a few tweaks but it has so much potential. Some feedback after playing, 1) Biggest complaint: it is so difficult to select a workstation with the current controls. Even if I am facing and touching the workstation, it won't select. 2) I find it odd that the movement is WASD but the character moves along with the diagonal perspective of the world. 3) It feels a little unbalanced. Some food takes a very long time to cook, so it is near impossible to make it in time for each customer. Maybe if there was more buffer time when the store opens to prep that would help. Or balance out the cook time/customer wait time a little bit more. 4) You can't tell the quantity of items that you put in the container to serve. If the capacity is 2 of each, there's no way to know if you have 1 or 2. 5) Story-wise, interesting introduction. But for the rest of the game, there is no "discovery" aspect to new recipes as the introduction suggested. The new recipes just kind of appear in your book after a certain time. It would be cool if you unlocked recipes through meeting or interacting with new characters/customers or something.

The art stands out to me the most, it is super cute and charming! I am enjoying all the Malaysian references too (fellow SEAbling!) I especially love the tapirs holding the tingkat containers and discovering the local dishes which look very appetising. The gameplay is a little simple, which doesn't give a lot of room to do much, and the cooking timing is a little frustrating initially, but after I figured it out, it is an enjoyable game for a chill cozy time.

Super cute little game with really chill music, loving the south east asian vibes and food references too.

A lovely cooking game that's a but addicting partly due to the want for upgrading, getting new recipies but perhaps mainly the skill based gambling on the Wishingtree. I wish they could implement a few more animations, like for the vendor and perhaps add the calendar in the back or clock of the shop to move. Or perhaps replace. 7h of entertainment so far and I still have much more to do. I got my copy for free but in my world this is definitely worth the cost.

Kooeh: A Timeless Delight me dejó una sensación difícil de encasillar, de esas que no vienen tanto por lo que el juego te explica, sino por lo que te hace sentir mientras lo juegas. Desde el inicio, me atrapó su atmósfera. Hay algo en su dirección artística y en su ritmo que se siente casi como un sueño tranquilo, pero con pequeñas puntadas de misterio que te mantienen curiosa todo el tiempo. No es un juego que te empuje con prisa; más bien te invita a quedarte, a observar, a explorar sin presión, y eso personalmente lo agradecí muchísimo. La jugabilidad es sencilla, pero no en el sentido negativo. Es más bien minimalista, como si cada acción estuviera pensada para no romper la experiencia contemplativa. Hubo momentos en los que me encontré simplemente avanzando por el escenario sin prisas, disfrutando de los detalles, y eso dice mucho del tipo de experiencia que propone. A nivel narrativo, no todo se entrega de forma directa, lo que puede ser un arma de doble filo. Me gustó esa sensación de ir armando el significado poco a poco, pero también sentí que algunas partes podrían haber tenido un poco más de claridad o desarrollo. Aun así, ese aire enigmático encaja bastante bien con su identidad. La música merece una mención especial. Es sutil, envolvente y acompaña perfectamente cada momento sin robar protagonismo, pero sí potenciando muchísimo la atmósfera. Hay escenas que probablemente no me habrían impactado igual sin ese acompañamiento sonoro. Si tuviera que resumirlo, diría que Kooeh: A Timeless Delight no es un juego para “pasar el rato”, sino para dejarse llevar. Es corto, pero deja una huella tranquila, casi melancólica, como cuando terminas algo bonito y te quedas un momento en silencio antes de volver a la realidad. No es perfecto, pero sí muy coherente con lo que quiere ser. Y eso, al final, se siente valioso. Mi video: https://youtu.be/Xd7dRqg3xwc