KFC Goes Kawaii with Its Very Own Dating Sim

In the Venn diagram of gamers and fast food aficionados, the overlap is fairly large. So perhaps we should be less surprised than we are that Kentucky Fried Chicken is set to launch an official video game at the end of the month. 

‘I Love you Colonel Sanders!’ is described as a ‘finger lickin’ dating simulator’ that should see the brand turn keyboard warriors in the keyboard lovers.

The game has been developed by Psyop – best known in adland for their animation, but with a growing indie video game division. Published by KFC, it will be released on the PC gaming platform Steam on September 24th. The trailer was created by UK-based animation studio Shotopop.

If you fancy your chances – and fancy the Colonel – the game might be for you. Set in the University of Cooking School: Academy for Learning, the game sees the player take the role of an aspiring chef. As well as trying to build their career in the wonderful world of fried chicken, the player can also attempt to date the Colonel himself. With multiple endings, cooking battles and secret recipes, there’s plenty for fans to tuck into.

If you’re the sort of person who prefers to compensate for their lacking love life by watching the Bachelor or Love Island, rather than helping Mario find his Princess Peach, you may need a brief intro to the genre. Dating Sims, as the name suggests, are games that allow players to embark upon a romantic adventure where they meet multiple characters and navigate a series of interwoven scenarios. While the genre took off in Japan, US indie developers have been getting meta with their flirty fun. The top-selling dating sim on the Steam platform is currently Dream Daddy, in which the player takes the role of a dad who has moved to a new town and is presented with a number of romantic options with his fellow fathers. Another quirky – and popular – outing in the courtship canon is Hatoful Boyfriend, in which the player pursues a relationship with a pigeon. And then there’s Doki Doki Literature Club, a school-set story that deconstructs the genre… and takes your sanity with it. So while it may seem a bit of an odd choice for KFC, odd is sort of the point when it comes to dating sims.