Let’s start off the new year with some meat barbeque! I haven’t get to go eat some good yakiniku lately so for now I’ll settle with the virtual one, haha. This is the first gaming stream of the year and part of my series of trying out different random games each stream week!
The game I’m trying this time alternates between calling itself ‘Yakiniku Simulation’ or ‘Yakiniku Simulator’, and somehow on Twitch it is put in the ‘Driving/Racing game’ category. Well, I guess the meat is all racing into our stomach? I want to talk a bit about this game here!
Download on: Steam
(Hand & BBQ prop steam assets credits to ottoyuen1)
The game is, as the name says, is a simulator of cooking some yakiniku. You can drag different kinds of meat to the grill, change the cooking fire settings, then pick up to ‘eat’ the meat. There is no co-op or multiplayer mode, so it’s just you and all the meat you want.
It took me awhile to realize you can click on the meat to flip it around to cook both sides. There isn’t any tutorial stage or clear instructions, so you just figure it out as you go.
Careful not to overcook the meat as it can burst in flames in front of your eyes or as you pick it up!
There is some lettuce at the top right corner, but I’m not sure what it does besides making some eating sound effects when you click it. At first I thought we could wrap the meat with it, haha.
There are several challenges mode in the game that you can compete to get into the high score leaderboard or beat your own previous high scores:
Score challenge
Score as many points within time limit by grilling as many meat as possible.
Time attack
Get to the 2,500 points goal as fast as possible. Perfectly cooked meat on both sides will score more points.
Combo rush
Grill the meat requested in the screen in order, get as many combos possible to get more points in the time limit.
Harami master
Cook 11 pieces of harami meat as perfectly as possible and quickly to get the best points in the leaderboard.
Best friend
You’re cooking for your three ‘friends’ who will keep requesting for different kinds of specific meat type. Such best friends, hmm.
Or if you want to simply chill, there is the free mode as well where you can do whatever you want without time or score limits.
For me, I spent most time in the combo mode, and made it to the top 25 after some tries. It worked best for me when I raised the fire to level 4, then cook 1-2 meat at a time so I don’t get too confused of the order and don’t burn things by accident. Some meat types cook faster than others and some is a bit harder to see the color change when being cooked.
The harami challenge confused me for some time how to cook the meat perfectly as it’s quite hard to tell when to pick it up, but my friend tried it out and immediately climbed up the high score rankings by cooking 5-6 meat at a time then flipping them at higher fire level. Sometimes I accidentally drag the meat to the lettuce side and it just disappears, so you gotta be careful with that.
Overall, it’s a pretty simple and fun single-player game. It can get as chill or as challenging as you want depending which mode you pick and how far you want to go.
There is no storyline, levels, or power-ups to grind for, so it’s pretty chill to pick up again whenever you want to play. If you like competing for leaderboards, you can keep trying to score higher and figure out new tricks in different modes.
Heads up – the meat sizzling and munching sounds, and to see the meat changing colors as it get cooked, they can get pretty hunger-inducing, so after playing it for some while you might end up craving for some good meat!
Hope this game can be enjoyable for you to try out as well! Stay tuned for updates of other games I’ll be trying out this year! I’ll mostly be streaming on Twitch on weekly basis at night 9PM and above on GMT+7 timezone. I’m interested in other chill or casual simulator games as well, feel free to drop in your suggestions!
