I Love You, Colonel Sanders! Review PC

Kentucky Fried Chicken knows what you need. Has it been a while since your last haircut? The company will hook you up with a bowl cut. Want to jump straight to dessert along with your entree, instead of waiting until after dinner? KFC has you covered. Have you ever fantasized about long walks on the beach, hand-in-hand with the fast-food chain’s silver fox founder, Colonel Sanders? Well, you’re in luck. I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator is available now on Steam with the promise of nabbing the fried chicken hunk all for yourself. The free-to-play game has enough dumb-fun antics and laughable moments to make it worth the price, but ultimately, I Love You, Colonel Sanders! is just another massive marketing stunt by the chicken-fried franchise. Expecting anything more than that will probably ruffle your feathers.

Why Did The Culinary Student Cross The Road?

I Love You, Colonel Sanders! puts players in the shoes of a new student starting their first of three total days at a prestigious culinary school. Although becoming a master chef is their dream, players quickly re-prioritize their fantasies to focusing on acquiring the love and adoration of fellow student, Colonel Sanders, who is as mysterious as he is beautiful. Throughout the three day journey to graduation, players are tasked with making decisions that impact the outcome of the story, which takes less than an hour to play through entirely.

The interactive visual novel takes essentially every element from the dating sim and JRPG genres that you can imagine (short of throwing pokèballs). The characters are about as stereotypical as you can get, including an eccentric best friend, a duo of nemeses that are as non-threatening and equally as annoying as a housefly, a professor who is actually a talking corgi, and an obvious love interest who effortlessly charms the pants off of everyone (not literally, as the game explicitly started at one point during my play though). There’s even a “battle sequence” in which players fight against a spork monster a la turn-based combat. Although there are ample opportunities for the game to overdo it at the risk offending fans of either the dating sim genre or JRPGs in general, it does well to rein it in and poke fun at itself before making fun of the genres or the fans.

Deep-Fried Love

I Love You, Colonel Sanders! knows exactly what it’s trying to be, and makes plenty of self-aware jokes to let players know that fact. It’s a dating simulator that tells players exactly who it wants you to date. Given its title, it really shouldn’t be a surprise that the goal is to date the Colonel. On that note, I’d be nervous starting up any other ACTUAL dating sim with a title containing the words “finger lickin.’”

The game makes it pretty easy to progress forward. When presented with response choices during interactions with other characters, it’s pretty obvious which ones will move the conversation forward, and which ones are just there for self-aware humor. That’s not to say it’s totally easy, though, as was the case for me during some of the game’s actual tests. It turns out you can get a premature “Game Over” in I Love You, Colonel Sanders! Thankfully, you can restart the game and pick up where you failed.

The game totes the statement of featuring “multiple hours of play-through,” and maybe that’s true. Given that my first hour-long attempt resulted in what I assume is the point of the game, I felt accomplished enough. That is to say, I felt no need to go back through to see what other outcomes I might be able to uncover.

No Fowl Play Here

I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator is fine. The game is funny (and free) enough to make it worth playing, but for those toeing the line on deciding whether or not to play, rest assured that you won't be missing out on anything if you decide to pass. It’s clearly another incredibly in-depth marketing strategy by KFC to get people talking about them and buying their food. But honestly, I'd be lying if I said that I didn’t have an urge to jump in my car and pick up a Famous Bowl while I was playing.