I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator is a comedic Visual Novel officially created by the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant franchise (No, really), and Psyop released via digital distribution on September 24, 2019.
The player takes the role of a promising student at a culinary school, and Colonel Sanders takes the role of a classmate. Do you have what it takes to survive? Will Colonel Sanders choose you to be his business partner? Or maybe even so much more?
Tropes:
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Colonel. Freaking. Sanders.
- Advertisement Game: The game itself is essentially an ad for KFC. The final dish that the protagonist and Sanders work together to make is the Mac and Cheese bowl, which was introduced to their menus a month before the game's release.
- Affectionate Parody: Lightly pokes fun at the dating simulator genre.
- Ambiguous Gender: It's never actually commented on whether the player is male or female.
- Animesque: Look at it.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: As it turns out, Clank is really an alien robot from another dimension, and must return home after graduation.
- Bilingual Dialogue: Clank communicates with everyone using lines like "Bzzzzt", "~Whirrrr~", "*Beep*". At least Miriam completely understands him.
- But Thou Must!: No matter how you handle it, you can't avoid the protagonist daydreaming midway in the cookoff with Aeshleigh, and it's inevitable that they injure their hand in the process. Scoring well in the timed quiz, though, may win you some affection with Sanders.
- Butt-Monkey: The Student never gets to properly introduce himself. After he gets killed by Van Van's cooking, he constantly attempts to coax the protagonist onto a quest to avenge him, but gets constantly interrupted before he finishes.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Bob. Apparently he doesn't know what cooking is, But his father is the dean of the university, so he gets a free pass.
- Calling Your Attacks: Parodied in final exam scene.
- Cardiovascular Love: The Heart Symbols on the Start Screen's display of the title, in a Dating Simulator Affectionate Parody, that has the word "Love" in the title.
- Cherry Blossoms: The entrance of Colonel Sanders onto the scene is often heralded by cherry petals floating across the screen.
- Cleavage Window: Aeshleigh has a small heart-shaped window on her sweater showing cleavage.
- Cooking Duel: Two take place over the three days.
- Department of Redundancy Department: "University of Cooking School: Academy for Learning" and "THE FINAL COMPETITION SHOWDOWN CHALLENGE EXAM™".
- Disney Acid Sequence: The opening movie
, seriously. The entire thing looks like it was made on a heaping dose of LSD and certainly sets the tone and expectations for the game. - Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The student in your class who is only known by Student.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The cooking school's entire semester — and the game's entire story — lasts a whole three in-game days.
- Faking the Dead: The unnamed student faked his death after eating Van Van's braised octopus tentacles in hopes of getting the class talking about him for once. It works to a certain extent, since he starts showing up in the various hallucinations and dreams the protagonist has after that point. He drops the ruse during graduation.
- Food Porn: A lot of KFC food gets appetizing shots, as well as some non-KFC dishes, although those are often comically exaggerated. Indeed everyone seems to have their signature style.
- Colonel Sanders, to no one's surprise, makes fried chicken. Really good fried chicken.
- The player's food is very down-to-the-earth country style dishes, such as mashed potatoes with gravy, coleslaw, mac and cheese, and chicken pot pie. Note that these are all KFC side dishes, at least in North America.
- Van Van, the Man Man, being a Shounen character that apparently got lost at some point makes over-the-top, visually appealing but ultimately poorly prepared seafood, such as serving braised octopus tentacle on an Axe, or chopping open a sea urchin to use as a bowl for a dish he garnished with spikes from another sea urchin.
- Aeshleigh mostly makes overly-fancy frilly high-class deserts.
- Miriam makes comically small food, such as tiny udon noodles.
- Pop... isn't even clear what cooking is.
- Clank appears to also make fried chicken, being a sentient pressure frier, but we never get to see any of it.
- Forced Transformation: It's revealed that the spork monsters were actually various Civilized Animal victims who were cursed by a spell cast by one of their rivals.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The game lets you name your protagonist at the start of a new game.
- Macho Camp: Van Van the Man Man combines a Heroic Build and flamboyant mannerisms to give this impression.
- Multiple Endings: There are four outcomes, based on whether you win Sanders' respect as a fellow chef and/or as a love interest. There are also multiple (sometimes bizarre) ways to get a Game Over.
- Press Start to Game Over: You can get a Game Over just by choosing to sleep in at the very first dialogue choice.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Clank can actually speak English, but pretends not to, in order to keep his masquarade as an industrial pressure cooker up. He drops it by accident during the big exam tho.
- Only One Save File: Saves which checkpoints have been unlocked to be able to start the game from, instead of exactly where the player ended.
- The Rival: Classmate Aeshleigh is described as "totally evil, but you can't help but be filled with jealousy".
- Talking Animal: Your main instructor is Professor Dog, a talking pup in a chef outfit.
- Talking Is a Free Action: Averted — the protagonist spends so much time powering up in the climax that their pot pie ends up burning in the oven.
- Title Drop: Should the player reach the Golden Ending where they win over Sanders's heart and respect, the protagonist professes their love to Sanders.
- Tome of Eldritch Lore: Aeshleigh is outright stated to be in possession of one. The player also gets one after defeating the spork monster in the turn-based RPG battle.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: The fight with the Spork monster plays out in a turn-based battle akin to one from Final Fantasy.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Sparing the Spork monster and reaching the Golden Ending gives you one last option to adopt it in the epilogue.
