Midnight Ramen review

A hearty bowl of existentialism

In games like Necrobarista and Bear’s Restaurant, cafes and eateries are more than just destinations that serve a hot drink or a bite to eat. These locations are a catalyst for social connection, often providing much needed solace for the distressed. Largely, that’s the same concept behind Cointinue Games’ Midnight Ramen.

As the title implies, you’ll spend a significant portion of your time serving bowls of scrumptious noodles. Preparation involves following the requests of your street stall’s nightly customers. From boiling the noodles until they’re the desired firmness, adding ingredients like scallions, egg, chashu, fish cakes, bamboo, or seaweed, and adding the proper soup base, Midnight Ramen recreates the essential steps of preparation.

Appealing Ingredients

Pleasingly, it’s all quite stress-free. There’s an on-screen recap of each order, a cooking guide you can peek at, and for the most part, Ramen skirts the fretfulness of timed gastronomic games like Cook, Serve, Delicious! Forget a vital ingredient and the game will offer a compassionate reminder while you can redo a recipe if you somehow manage to make a mistake. And when I accidentally served up sake instead of green tea, the customer noticed but didn’t seem to mind.

Unsurprisingly, you’ll dish up more than just bowls of tonkotsu, shio, miso, or shoyu ramen. One regular liked his chashu pan fried, while other customers might ask for gyoza or tamagoyaki, a traditional Japanese rolled omelet. Occasionally, your clients allow for some flexibility. And while there’s no wrong choices when going omakase, it’s oddly gratifying to whip up a meal you’d think might match their mood.

Personalities as Varied as Flavors

And yes, you’ll become intimately familiar with much of your clientele. Like VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action, you’ll interact with them across visual novel sequences. At first, many patrons might just be looking for some soul-lifting nourishment. But over time, they’ll reveal more of their personalities, expressing their worries, hopes, and ambitions. Realistically, they won’t just speak to the restaurant’s owner or his teenaged apprentice Homura, but they’ll interact with each other. Observing these moments, where social gaffes are frequent, feels refreshingly organic. And without spoiling Ramen’s recipe, there’s an overarching storyline that tenderly connects things.

At launch, there are only a few missteps that mar Ramen’s otherwise delectable flavor. Written dialog (there’s no voice acting) is in English, Chinese, and Japanese, with the former having a few forgivable typos. And while the low-fi beats complement the pensive mood, the limited number of tracks means that aural repetition occurs. But on the upside, the game’s character art is wonderfully expressive, whether conveying a salary man’s sullenness or a withdrawn student’s tendency to hide behind her schoolbag. But the real highlights are the simple, yet evocative sound effects. Here, the slurp of noodles or the melodic chime that signals a completed order impeccably captures the atmosphere of being at an intimate street stall.

Conclusion

Midnight Ramen’s storyline is told across fourteen chapters and should take most players about 5-6 hours to complete. Tackling some weighty and relatable subjects, the cast undoubtedly makes a lasting impression. As such, you’ll want to savor the game’s salient moments, rather than scarf down the exposition.

Midnight Ramen was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.