I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator Review

Maybe you like KFC. Maybe you’ve seen the commercial success of that smiling old man with the white beard, Colonel Sanders. But I can guarantee you don’t know about his past, or the things he got up to in his younger days at culinary school.

And that’s exactly what I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator on Steam is here to tell you: that mysterious, dreamlike, enigmatic, untold story.

Young Colonel Sanders is a student at a mysterious culinary school. It’s a weird school—there are monsters, ghosts, and a gay guy named Van Van. After he transfers in, he becomes the center of attention. Every day he rides a beautiful little pony to class, wins the praise of Teacher Dog (yes, literally a dog teacher), and at lunchtime, Sanders busts out his homemade fried chicken, which earns unanimous praise from his classmates. Why is his fried chicken so good?

“Because I carefully selected 11 secret spices, and together they create this irresistible flavor.”

Sanders is a serious guy, and he’s got big dreams. He wants more people to taste his delicious chicken. He wants to spread the wonder of chicken to every corner of the world. He wants to open a chain, become a great man, leave his mark on the world, spread joy, spread love.

Great Sanders eventually graduates, winning the admiration of students and faculty alike. Many are smitten by his good looks, obsessed with his cooking, captivated by his dreams.

In this game, you play as a nobody—and you can even embark on an unbelievable romantic journey with young Sanders. He encourages you while you cook. He says “I believe in you” when you answer questions. And at the graduation ball, he asks you for the last dance.

“If you keep the right attitude, every day is a new adventure!”

“Every failure is a stepping stone toward success.”

“Follow your dreams. Keep following them until the day you die.”

Getting close to young Colonel Sanders isn’t just about liking KFC—it’s more about his dream-filled, positive life philosophy.

No wonder some player who tried this game said:

“After playing this game I am no longer racist.”

Of course, despite all the hype, I’m giving this a negative review.

Sure, the game’s selling point is big, and judging by the startup logo it seems KFC officially sponsored it, so it’s free. But this thing has way too many problems…

Absolutely terrible optimization

This game was made in Unity, and the optimization is terrible. Let me be clear: terrible. I tried it on a few machines. After running for a bit, the game eats up nearly 3 GB of RAM and almost 90% CPU—and that’s with the performance-priority mode. I can’t even imagine what the quality-priority mode would do. My computer can’t run it. My 1070ti desktop had been gathering dust for too long, so I only barely got it running on that machine.

A little indie game using resources on the level of a AAA title. I’m done.

Couldn’t you have used Kirikiri or that open-source Python engine? And I’ve seen other Unity visual novels—none of them hog resources like this. What the hell are you doing?

Terrible UI and controls

The game itself is poorly optimized and stutters constantly. There are lots of choices, and if you’re not careful you’ll hit a Bad End. But here’s the kicker: the game lags, and when you’re clicking, it’ll randomly freeze for a second, and you end up accidentally picking some option that just popped up—you don’t even get to read what it says… you just pick it, and bam, Bad End.

And there’s no save function. No save function, period. After you beat the game you can pick Load Game, and oh, look at that—each chapter you clear unlocks a checkpoint, and you can jump to it with Load Game…

Dialogue is hit or miss

Early on, a lot of the dialogue is pretty funny, including the over-the-top praise for Sanders—it gives you that “I’m Sakamoto, the Coolest” vibe. But later you start to notice a lot of the praise feels a bit… like an ad.

I don’t know if it’s because KFC paid for it. Sure, a lot of the Sanders praise is actually true—look at KFC’s history and it does mention the 11-spices thing. And the game adds a bunch of parody characters, including that gay guy Van Van the man Man, who besides grossing the player out… doesn’t really do anything else.

All in all, this game is a KFC-sponsored (probably) parody with a bit of promotion thrown in. It’s short—about an hour (I ended up playing for an hour and a half because of the stuttering). But as a game, it has too many flaws: bad optimization, bad UI. Apart from the parody content and Colonel Sanders’ sexy CGs, there’s almost nothing to recommend it. If you’re patient and curious, it might be worth a taste…

Just make sure your PC is beefy enough first.

Oh right, the game supports Linux. You’ll need to opt into the Steam Beta and launch it with Steam Play (i.e., Wine), and add this parameter:

-force-d3d9

Then it’ll run.

Originally published on Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/plumlis/recommended/1121910

P.S. My Sina Weibo account is back from the dead: https://weibo.com/sumomogal