I love you, colonel Sanders! A finger lickin’ good dating simulator | a Review
originally published on 13/01/2024;
Hello everyone, I am the reserved KFC enjoyer, G.E.M.Simov, a goon that only eats KFC once every three months, if not rarer, here to tell you about the funky advertisement/game: “I love you, colonel Sanders! A finger lickin’ good dating simulator”.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
This is a visual novel, or rather a dating simulator, and as such it does not have great gameplay. The Player inputs a name - which is all the keyboard usage they’ll get out of this - after which they exclusively press the left mouse button to go through boxes of text and, occasionally, pick one out of two, or three, options to progress the story with a faint illusion of choice.
There are many game-over screens, but the means to getting them are so obvious that there is very little, if any, brain-power required to avoid them and succeed at the game. It is one that does not require remembering things, consulting with a journal or a wiki, or doing anything else - it can be boiled down to reading what the Characters say and clicking.
However, that is all that is done – clicking. In fact, there is so little to do in the game, aside from clicking, that it becomes difficult to really consider it a game. There are no elements aside from clicking to progress onto the next text box – the Player cannot access an inventory (as there is none), the Player cannot make a decision on whether to go to a location or to speak to a certain Character, as everything revolves around one possible path to be taken, coupled with a few delineations that lead into “game over” screens.
Seeing as that is everything there is to the game, and there is so little gameplay that it can hardly be called gameplay, it fails in every regard. 0/3
Presentation
This game is an advertisement for KFC, which plays upon the tropes of the Dating Simulator game genre, by having an appearance very clearly inspired by eastern animation and comics, ala anime, but done slightly oddly. I can’t perfectly explain what it is, but as soon as I laid eyes upon this game I could tell that something was off.
Whether it was the uncanny valley, or I simply do not jive with that interpretation of the “classic” “anime” style, there’s something off putting about the game’s appearance. That not only applies to the characters, but also the backgrounds that are present, though not so greatly for the latter. The fact that I can’t tell what it is that is problematic about them, and there’s just something that feels off, is most annoying, but it has something to do with the linework and, maybe, the coloring.
Regardless, even the opening cinematic was off, because it ran at a crisp 12 frames per second, which was clearly noticeable as being improper. One other thing that the opening cinematic did was establish that the music in this game was going to be decent - as the track that played during it was okay.
Then, as one gets on with the game, that remains constant - the musical tracks that are either selected or composed for the “KFC game” are decent, not intrusive in the slightest and quite pleasant to listen to as ambience. The same cannot be said about the Sound Effects, which are more than just a mixed bag - some are dreadful, others are mediocre but loud, and third are passable.
One other thing that is beyond mixed is the feedback the Player receives. When hovering the mouse cursor over a button, there are two options - either a sound effect will play, indicating that the button can be pressed, but without any animation indicating that the button is intractable, OR the sound effect will play in conjunction with an animation indicating that the button is interactable.
The weirdest thing is the inconsistency - because there are buttons that have visual indication that they are being hovered over, and then there are others that do not. That’s beyond odd…
Overall, though, the game looks passable. The sound-effects have their moments, the music is mostly okay, as previously mentioned, though with a few exceptions. Simply put, this is barely over the counter for bad. 2/3
Story
The story in this game is the weakest part of it all, maybe even weaker than the gameplay, because it is just a slew of references to dating simulators and slice-of-life animes, each coming at the Player at such a rapid speed that it’s beyond impossible to neither suspend one’s disbelief, neither laugh at it for the bad joke that it is.
The Player picks a name and goes on to spend three whole days studying at a Culinary university, with their best childhood friend and their arch-rival, as well as a few other funky characters and Colonel Sanders, in whom the Player Character falls in love immediately and spends the entire three days of the semester in loving pursuit of Colonel Sanders.
There is an “arena showoff”, there’s a quiz, there’s a magical monster that attacks, there are people just dying and turning into ghosts - it’s so full of tropes dialed up to eleven and made as unintriguing as possible that it becomes boring less than a third of the way to the end.
It’s just an advertisement for KFC. It has no value beyond that, but someone had to sit down and write this, and at the very least doesn’t have any spelling or grammatical mistakes, and there’s some adherence to a cohesive plot structure and the cliches are used appropriately, even if everything is overwhelmingly cringeworthy. Mostly out of pity! 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? No. It is, softly put, a soulless cash grab. Fortunately, it does not cost money, but it’s just an advertisement for KFC that mostly makes fun of genres that might deserve some flak, but definitely not that much. 0/1
Conclusion
3/10. When the novelty of this being a KFC based dating simulator wears off, what the Player is left with is nothing of substance. It is not a good game, it is not a good story, it is not even a good experience, because it fails at managing to be interesting beyond the first few moments. I cannot recommend this “game” to anyone.
On the wall of shame it goes. Please don’t make games like this!