''I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin' Good Dating Simulator'' is a

dating sim Dating sims, also known as dating simulation games, are a video game subgenre of simulation games with romantic elements. While resembling the visual novel genre in presentation, true dating sims utilize an additional statistical and time manage ...

developed by Psyop. The video game was commissioned by the restaurant chain

KFC KFC Corporation, doing business as KFC (an abbreviation of Kentucky Fried Chicken), is an American fast food restaurant chain specializing in fried chicken and chicken sandwiches. Headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, it is the world's se ...

and released for free on

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

on September 24, 2019. A parody of conventional dating sims, the primary objective of the player is to develop a romantic relationship with a fictionalized version of KFC's founder

Colonel Sanders Harland David Sanders (September 9, 1890 December 16, 1980) was an American businessman and founder of fast food chicken restaurant chain KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken (now known as KFC). He later acted as the company's brand ambassador and sym ...

, portrayed as an attractive classmate at a cooking school. The release of the game follows the reintroduction of Colonel Sanders into KFC's marketing campaigns in 2015, and is part of the company's strategy to make the Colonel a "part of pop culture", reimagining the historical figure for modern times. The game successfully received public attention due to the "can-you-believe-it" premise both before and after the game's release.

Gameplay

The game takes place over a three-day semester at the fictional University of Cooking School: Academy for Learning, where the player character is studying to become a chef. The player is presented with dialog choices that present opportunities to win Sanders' favor, as well as interactions with the other characters in the story, including the player's best friend Miriam, rivals Aeshleigh and Van Van the Man Man, Sprinkles/Professor Dog, and other students Pop, Clank the robot, and the nameless Student. A single playthrough takes about an hour, not including replaying different story line branches.

Reception

''I Love You, Colonel Sanders!'' received an overall lukewarm response from professional reviewers. In her review for ''

Kotaku ''Kotaku'' is a video game website and blog that was originally launched in 2004 as part of the Gawker Media network. Notable former contributors to the site include Luke Smith, Cecilia D'Anastasio, Tim Rogers, and Jason Schreier. History ...

'', Gita Jackson criticized the game's lack of emotional depth and over-reliance on "zaniness", comparing it unfavorably to other "goofy" dating sims like ''

Hatoful Boyfriend is a Japanese ''dōjin soft'' '' otome'' visual novel released in 2011 for Microsoft Windows and OS X, in which all the characters other than the protagonist are sentient birds. It was developed by manga artist Hato Moa's dōjin circle PigeoNa ...

'' and '' Nameless''. Nicole Carpenter of ''

Polygon In geometry, a polygon () is a plane figure made up of line segments connected to form a closed polygonal chain. The segments of a closed polygonal chain are called its '' edges'' or ''sides''. The points where two edges meet are the polygon ...

'' reviewed the game in the context of KFC's apparent marketing strategy to distance the Colonel Sanders mascot from the actual person. She criticized it as "less of a game and more of a marketing stunt", with very little actual interactivity, and felt that it contributed to a trend of disrespect for the dating sim genre within the video game community. The art was praised by Jenny Zhang of ''

Eater Eater may refer to: * Eater (band), an English punk rock group * "Eater" (''Fear Itself''), a 2008 episode of the NBC television horror anthology ''Fear Itself'' * ''Eater'' (novel), a 2000 science fiction novel by Gregory Benford * ''Eater'' ( ...

'', comparing it favorably to ''

Ouran High School Host Club is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Bisco Hatori. It was serialized in Hakusensha's '' LaLa'' magazine between the September 2002 and November 2010 issues. The series follows Haruhi Fujioka, a scholarship student at Ou ...

''. The review-aggregator website

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

gave the game an aggregate score of 50/100 based on critic reviews.

References

External links

Product page on Steam
* {{KFC Dating sims 2019 video games Advergames Works based on advertisements MacOS games Parody video games Video games set in schools Video games about food and drink Video games developed in the United States Windows games KFC Free-to-play video games Psyop (company) games