Hello, this is YNOT!
We’re here to bring you the latest news about our spooky-cute cooking tycoon, Spookitchen.
We hit 1500 wishlists!Thanks so much for all the love and support.
From August 13 to August 31, the Spookitchen playtest will be available on Steam!
Unlike our previous closed recruitment on Discord, this time there’s no need to sign up — you can jump right in and play as soon as the playtest goes live.
We’re opening it up so that folks discovering us through BIC can easily try the game from our Steam page.
Spookitchen will be exhibiting at the Busan Indie Connect Festival (BIC)!
📅 Aug 8 – Aug 29
If you have a BIC online ticket, you can play Spookitchen on the BIC website.
📅 Aug 15 – Aug 17
📍 BEXCO Exhibition Hall, Busan
We’ll be running a playable booth for Spookitchen at BIC!
Spookitchen has passed the first round of the Global Indie Game Development Contest (GIGDC)!
Thank you so much for all your supportive comments.
Compared to the first playtest, the core content hasn’t changed much — but we’ve made several improvements to reduce overall fatigue and guide players more naturally through the game, including level design reworks and an updated tutorial.
One major change: previously, you could receive random phone calls in the kitchen — even while exploring dungeons — forcing you to run back. Now, we’ve added a Phone Order Gauge so you can take calls whenever you want. We’ve also added a Pause menu and Return Portal to improve convenience.
We’ve introduced a tutorial for the order-and-delivery cycle early in the game, rebalanced levels, and streamlined playtime from about 2–3 hours to around 1–2 hours.
Tutorial
Return portal in dungeons
Rhythm game added to cooking mini-game
New area: Backyard
Pause menu with ESC
Move all to storage / move all to inventory functions
Order tag filtering
Additional tags added based on extra ingredients when cooking
NPC animations
Graphics options & performance optimization with occlusion culling
Notice when Popularity Bar is full and victory is possible
Popularity progress bar now previews today’s gained popularity
Order management UI now shows order status preview
Changed to taking orders manually by spending Phone Order Gauge
Cancelling an order now decreases popularity
Updated character voice sounds
Dungeon and map layouts adjusted, reduced map length
Mines now open 24/7
Forfeiting a round now counts as a loss
Improved seed planting convenience
Rebalanced and redesigned levels
Improved UI/UX visibility and readability
Updated windmill cooking animation
Added ability to preview recipes with Alt while cooking
Edited dialogue and retranslated English/Japanese
Improved movement, jump speed, and overall feel
Fixed display error for Advanced Stardust Dispenser
Fixed sound effect volume adjustment bug
We’ll continue refining the build to make it more appealing and prepare a public demo. Planned work includes:
Adding story and intro
Opening new areas
More balancing and level design work
Creating background music
Uploading the demo to itch.io and other platforms
Adding more language translations
Thank you so much to everyone supporting Spookitchen!
See you soon in our quirky little ghost restaurant! 👻👻
- Dev Team YNOT