Kawaii Kitchen review - "Casual cooking fun!"

• Cute animals wanting burgers!
• No micro-transactions or ads
• Casual fun

I am a huge fan of cooking games, especially Diner Dash and the like. I've spent a lot of my time playing them, so when I heard that Crunchyroll launched one called Kawaii Kitchen, which wouldn't have ads due to their subscription model, I was down for it! 

Kawaii Kitchen is pretty simple - you get orders and fulfil them. There is a timer for each day as well as timers until your customers get a little frustrated with you because you are going too slow.

You play as an adorable animal, with costumes avaliable to unlock, and you serve other adorable animals. The actual gameplay of serving them is on a one-on-one basis unlike Diner Dash, which means that you'll have an individual come to your counter before you make their order.

There isn't any cooking in Kawaii Kitchen; instead, it's building the different burgers in the correct order, from bottom to top, and building the drinks in the correct order as well.

Messing up the order causes the entire thing you are working on to reset along with your combo to disappear, so it's important to pay attention even if you are looking to go quickly to earn more coins.

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Coins are used to purchase new characters, which unlock new restaurants too. There are a bunch of different places to eat, all following the same format: classic American burgers, Japanese bao bun style burgers, and even more magical ones like Unicorn burgers.

Slowly unlocking each one will reveal a new kitchen, new ingredents, and new items to unlock. It's quite fun completing these kitchens, getting side dishes sorted, and then saving for the next kitchen.

You can also gain XP from each of your days, which is given to you through hearts by your customers. The various customers have the ability to become more friendly with you, but their XP also unlocks new aspects of the current kitchen you are working on. It's another way of levelling up so you can spend your coins on your next level.

If you have a lot of coins, you can also use them to reset goals, which are set to reset after a set amount of time, getting longer and longer. These goals unlock small amounts of coins and different outfits for your character.

Kawaii Kitchen doesn't have any in-app purchases, ads or anything to distract you from the task at hand. I really appreciate this as I have been able to dive in and continue playing for as long as I want. 

Kawaii Kitchen is a fairly simple experience, but it's cute and the fact that it's not full of microtransactions or pay-to-win really makes it feel like a fantastic experience!