Review: Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends
Play as Sushi Bot, a Sushi Chef master in this restaurant and life simulation game. In Rolling Hills, you can unlock recipes, buy ingredients and manage your customers in your own Sushi restaurant. Buy decorations to style your restaurant, and chat with locals to get to know them better and find ways to solve the mysteries of the town that seems stuck and unable to grow.
Story
You arrive in the town of Rolling Hills as their new restaurant owner and Sushi Master, where the locals are keen for change and a new face. Greeted by the Mayor, you are then introduced to the locals and are tasked with building a growing client base for your restaurant and helping the town to lift the curse that has been placed on them.
You can get to know your neighbours by taking them to the local cafe for coffee or cakes, and the more time you spend with them the more you get to know their stories. The story overall and the characters are fairly hollow, which was quite disappointing. It doesn’t feel like you’re making much of an improvement to the town as the story progresses and the story itself is a bit basic. I’d have liked characters and a story with a bit more depth.
Gameplay
The core gameplay loop of the game is to open your restaurant to customers and serve them their orders. Over time, you can unlock more recipes, and buy extra ingredients to “level up” their quality resulting in better pay. This was an enjoyable part of the game, as Sushi Bot’s controls are really smooth and fun to glide around the restaurant delivering orders in time. The tension can grow the larger your restaurant gets with more and more customers to serve at once, but you can unlock extra features to make this easier. You can also purchase different decorations that can help enhance your customer’s patience and increase the amount of money you earn.
Graphics and Visuals
While I loved the design of Sushi Bot, I wasn’t that impressed with the design of the rest of the characters, but that could be personal taste. The town itself was quite sparse, there was a lot of blank space and houses that you couldn’t enter. The recipe designs were quite cute, and I did enjoy the different hats and decorations you could purchase. The graphics were clean, I’d just have liked a bit more personality and character.
Longevity
I completed the story in just under 10 hours, although there were more bits to unlock in the accessories that I didn’t go back to. There is plenty of recipes and accessories to unlock, but I did get all the decorations quite early in the game. While I really enjoyed the restaurant management part of the game, after a while it did get a little repetitive, and I was satisfied when the game ended as I felt I was retreading the same loop over and over.
Conclusion
The game was a bit of a mixed bag for me overall. While I really liked the design of Sushi Bot, the controls were fun, and the restaurant management element of the game was satisfyingly addictive, I found the visuals quite dull and the characters and story underwhelming and lacking in depth. If they’d have added a cooking simulation element to the game too I think it would have added an extra level of fun and variety. As the game is on Gamepass, I would recommend playing it there, and if you would be satisfied with the restaurant management part of the game, then it is enjoyable. However, if you’re looking for an good story and likeable characters, this wouldn’t be a good example.
