Introduction
Rice Bowl Restaurant is a casual simulator for the Nintendo Switch. It was developed by Nexvel Entertainment and CRX Entertainment and published by Soft Source. We at the Handheld Gaming Community would like to thank the publishers for the review code.
Overview
In the game Rice Bowl Restaurant, you are playing as a person who is running an up-and-coming food stand. You will be preparing iced tea, iced orange juice, and a variety of rice dishes. These rice dishes are a staple of Indonesian cuisine. The dish is called Nasi Campur, or as it translates, Mixed Rice dish.
Gameplay
Your food stand will have a variety of ingredients to make the mixed rice dish. Your customers will request anything from Soup, Eggplant, Fried or Boiled Eggs, Noodles, Chicken, Fish, Tofu, and Tempe. They can choose between iced tea and orange juice to drink.
The ingredients that you have to work with are not easy to tell apart, especially on the Switches 7″ screen. All of the different ingredients are not labelled, and the game won’t tell you what they are after the tutorial. You must serve your customers what they want before their patience meter runs out, or they will storm out.
The Story Mode which takes you through the first and from what I can see the only tutorial. In this mode it will be a basically endless line of customers where you need to keep your satisfied customers higher than your dissatisfied ones. There are elements of this that are not explained or pointed out. The first one is the store. I was thinking to myself that it would be great if I had more than one pot to boil water, or wok to fry food in. I found that through the store menu you can purchase additional pots and pans, and even enhance the ones you have. There is also a debt menu which will allow you to pay off debts. When you pay off one of these debts you will get a short story about the debt, and then you are fine to carry on with the game.
There is a catch. You need to work on the Challenge mode so to get gems, and more money so to buy these upgrades and additional items. The Challenge mode presents you with goals that you must achieve to get the reward and proceed to the next challenge. This mode is fun, but sometimes the challenge isn’t clear. This mode suffers from poor localization. Thankfully most of the time the errors in the instructions favor the player.
Controls
You can use the controller to move things around, but I found that to be very awkward. You have three customers at a time and the orders can feel very overwhelming. The way I played the game was to use the touch screen. This made the game much more playable.
Graphics/Performance
The game performs well, and there are no noticeable graphical glitches or slowdowns. The art style of the game reminds me of older flash games, but it works for the purpose of the game. The visuals of the game work for what it is trying to accomplish, but are very basic and lackluster.
Sound
The sound in the game is very relaxing. It lets you slide into the zone of preparing different mixed rice bowls at a frantic pace. The occasional sounds the patrons make are supposed to let you know that they are becoming impatient, but honestly, I didn’t notice who was making the noise as I was too busy preparing the food. If you are so inclined there is no reason to just turn down the volume and listen to a movie or a podcast while you play.
Story
I feel like the story in the game is pretty much non-existent. There are little bits of a story here and there, but unless I am missing something they seem to be very unnecessary. Do these kinds of games need a story? I wouldn’t have minded some evidence of progression through even the most barebones of a story. There are the short stories in the debt menu, but while playing in handheld mode, I didn’t even realize the debt menu was there until I discovered the store menu.
Value
Rice Bowl Restaurant is available for purchase from the Nintendo eShop for $14.99. If you are big fan of restaurant cooking simulators, then you will get a lot of value out of this game. If you just want to check the game because it looks fun and addictive, then maybe wait for a sale. The game is fun and addictive, but the controls are just not good, and make it so you must play in handheld mode.
Conclusion
Rice Bowl Restaurant is a restaurant simulator that has you making Indonesian style rice dishes. I thought it was neat that the player was making food from another culture. I was a little disappointed that the controls seem to favor the touch screen. Despite that disappointment I found myself losing hours to the game, trying to fulfill as many customer orders as possible. I think that the game could have used a better localization as much of the English language is not correct. This game is addictive and fun, and provides a lot of fun for 14.99. You can buy Rice Bowl Restaurant on the Nintendo eShop for $14.99. The Handheld Gaming Community would like to thank the publisher Soft Source for the review code.
