Game: Kokoro Kitchen
Genre: Casual, Indie, Simulation
System: Steam (Windows)
Developers | Publishers: Mango Leaf Games
Controller Support: Yes
Steam Deck: Unknown
Price: US $11.99 | UK £10.99 | EU € 12,79
Release Date: October 17th, 2025
A review code was provided; many thanks to Mango Leaf Games.
Kokoro Kitchen is a 2025 indie restaurant simulation game, developed and released by Mango Leaf Games.
The Premise of Kokoro Kitchen
In Kokoro Kitchen, we restore a cozy Japanese restaurant, cultivate a bountiful garden of fresh ingredients and prepare mouth-watering Japanese dishes for hungry locals. While working on our culinary skills, we bring life back to the spirit world. On our journey to culinary stardom, we are accompanied and helped by Alan, the cutest and grumpiest poultry-geist.
Gameplay
In Kokoro Kitchen, we have a typical farm-to-table cooking game, where we plant and harvest crops and use different ingredients to prepare delicious meals and meet all our customers’ needs.
We have several areas in our restaurant – a kitchen, a dining room and of course a kitchen garden. We also get a small but cozy living space above the restaurant.
Kokoro Kitchen can be roughly divided into two sections: farm-to-table cooking and managing the restaurant. Both parts are pretty straightforward. For the cooking, we have to take care of the kitchen garden by watering and harvesting the crops, feeding the animals, collecting eggs and milk. Then we go into the kitchen and follow the preparation methods outlined in the different recipes. The ingredient preparation is made by playing mini games. The ingredients vary from fermented soybeans to make soy sauce to drying green tea leaves to make matcha powder, and so on.
The restaurant management part includes choosing the menu and experimenting with new recipes, all to create food that our customers enjoy. We also have to carefully balance our time and the quality of each dish, so that our customers are happy and we earn enough money and experience for future upgrades. Those updates include new plants for our farm, upgrades to restore the restaurant, extra appliances for the kitchen, but also new decorations for our living space and more.
We also have a bit of mystery surrounding how we get into the spirit world and the history between Alan, our grumpy guide and the restaurant. Some of the customers we’ll meet are regulars and completing their challenges, which unlocks more of the story of the restaurant.
The World of Kokoro Kitchen
Kokoro Kitchen is a colorful and cozy cooking sim game. The interiors are bright and colorful, and the characters are delightfully quirky. The soundtrack is also pleasant. I really liked the living space above the restaurant and the fact that, upon starting the game, we can customize our character a bit.
The game starts with a short tutorial, which can also be skipped. At the end of the day, our character is told to go to bed, and the day ends, and a new one begins. We can see how the time progresses in the upper-right corner of the screen.
While there is a time management element in the game, we have to prepare and serve food to customers; there are no penalties for being late or misdelivering an order. It makes the game more relaxing.
Some Technical Things
Kokoro Kitchen has Steam achievements, but no Trading cards yet. It has three save game slots and it saves automatically at the end of each day. There’s a variety of basic audio and visual settings.
Conclusion
While Kokoro Kitchen is by no means reinventing the genre, with its colorful and cozy visuals and no stress gameplay, it is a pleasant enough game to pass the time if you like farm-to-table restaurant managing games. I don’t usually play a lot of restaurant management games, but I really liked how cozy and stress-free Kokoro Kitchen was, and I spent a lot more time there than in other games.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up
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