Curated by taste and lineage

You are over on calories, which means you are too full to eat, which means you are about to starve. So you squat until you have burned enough of them off to eat again.

The store page asks the question directly: how many days can a person survive on the ingredients of a takoyaki party alone. From there it stops being a joke premise and becomes a resource system. What you put inside the takoyaki determines its balance of protein, carbohydrates and fats, and you have to keep all three in range or you die. The part that makes it a machine rather than a gag is the ceiling on the other side: go over on calories and you are too full to eat, so you squat to burn them off and then eat again. Intake and expenditure are closed into the same loop, and the skill tree you spend on is not attack power but basal metabolic rate and squat efficiency. There are over twenty ingredients, unlocked the longer you stay alive, and an all-you-can-eat event during which nothing you eat counts as calories, which is your window to fix a badly skewed balance in one go. It supports up to four players online through quick match, where strangers are each surviving at their own pace, and friend match, which needs only a keyword; you can join and leave either at any time, and you can play the whole thing alone. In multiplayer you can cook takoyaki for other players, or take theirs away from them, and the store text names what it expects that to produce: collapsing trust, mutual suspicion, and the friendship that grows on the far side of it. It is the ninth entry in the developer's self-declared ¥300 series, and the page states outright that KIMIDORI SOFT permits monetised video and streaming of their games. Developer and publisher are both KIMIDORI SOFT; a direct check of all eighteen titles under that name on Steam found every one of them self-published, with no outside company anywhere in the record. Released August 26, 2022 at ¥350, it is Very Positive at 94 percent across 256 reviews (242 positive, 14 negative, measured with purchase type set to all rather than Steam's default filter, which shows a smaller sample), a paid title, not free, fully launched and not in Early Access, with no AI-generated-content disclosure and Steam's content descriptors empty. English is implemented and works. It has still not reached the West: of those 256 reviews, 20 are in English, fewer than the 24 in Korean, and no editorial article about it turned up in any language other than Japanese.

Published 2026-07-29

01First, the one feeling

• The squat is the whole design in one gesture. Every other survival game asks you to go find more; this one regularly asks you to make room, which turns your own satiety into the obstacle and your own body into the thing standing between you and the food that is already in front of you.
• Because the skill tree levels basal metabolism and squat efficiency, progression stops feeling like getting stronger and starts feeling like getting better at processing, and a run that is going well is one where you have engineered yourself into someone who can put more through.
• The store promises collapsing trust and mutual suspicion, and the mechanic underneath that promise is very small: someone can cook for you, or take what you cooked. Four people around one hot plate, each on their own private nutrition clock, is enough structure for that to mean something.

02Who this is for (and who it is not)

03The roots of this taste

94% positive·only 256 reviews — yet almost no one has found it

04Make this gem shine

If it speaks to you, check it on Steam and give it your first pass. Your push is what makes a buried gem shine.

05The bloodline of this taste

• Don't Starve Root
• Takoyaki Party Survival You are here
  • Read-and-build games another taste