Naraku no Kitchen Hands-On: A Cooking RPG From BitSummit PUNCH
Naraku no Kitchen is a rare game that puts a chef, not a fighter, at the center of an RPG, and its BitSummit debut shows there is audience interest in a cooking-focused support role rather than direct combat.
Reporting from 1 sources: Game Spark.
At BitSummit PUNCH, held May 22-24, 2026 in Kyoto, developer Pico Games showed a playable build of Naraku no Kitchen, a game where the protagonist is a chef named Ropp traveling with an adventuring party. The player gathers ingredients while the party auto-advances, cooks improvised meals to boost the party's stats, dodges incoming attacks, and occasionally fires a crossbow to support combat. The party can be set to either a support or combat style, and each adventurer has taste preferences that affect which dishes trigger their skills. Camping lets the player cook more elaborate meals that unlock character skills or new abilities for Ropp. The game includes about 40 recipes, split across meat, vegetable, dessert, and drink categories. Raising a character's affection by cooking their preferred foods unlocks a unique soul food dish that grants a large stat boost. Pico Games cited the influence of Vanillaware titles and recent anime and light novels centered on cooking. The developer plans a PC release on Steam for summer 2026, with a straight playthrough taking about three hours and full completion around five to six hours.
Pico Games, a solo developer, brought Naraku no Kitchen to BitSummit PUNCH as one of the event's playable indie titles. The protagonist Ropp is a kemono-style character who is also a member of a demon race, which ties into the game's lore about cooking monster ingredients. The developer noted that the party's combat style can be set per character in the full release, with each style offering different skills such as healing or area attacks. The affection system does not lead to character endings, but maxing out a character's affection teaches Ropp a soul food recipe unique to that adventurer, which provides a significant parameter boost. Pico Games said the game was inspired partly by the lack of chef-protagonist games compared to cooking-themed anime and light novels, and that the kemono design of Ropp was chosen partly to make drawing many character portraits more enjoyable. The developer also mentioned that Vanillaware titles, especially the previous game Yuri Tachi Fuumaden, influenced the visual style. The release window is summer 2026 on Steam, and the developer described the goal as creating an ultimate food-porn game that players should avoid playing late at night.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.