I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin' Good Dating Simulator
View the case- Brand
- KFC
- Year
- 2019
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Mechanic
- Adventure & Quest
- Platform
- In-Game
- Agency
- Wieden + Kennedy
Objective
Colonel Sanders had already been given a wink-and-a-nudge reboot in 2015, and KFC wanted to keep pushing him deeper into pop culture rather than let him settle back into logo duty. CMO Andrea Zahumensky described the goal as finding "new ways to reimagine the Colonel for modern times" — reaching gamers and younger fans through a format that didn't read as advertising, while quietly writing the chain's new Mac & Cheese Bowls into the plot. The premise was built to be too strange not to cover, and press picked up the joke well before the game even shipped.
Solution
Players enrol at a fictional cooking-school academy for a three-day, ten-chapter visual novel, clicking through dialogue and choosing responses that steer a budding romance with a young, improbably charming Colonel Sanders. The story keeps breaking into minigames along the way: a turn-based fight against a monster made of a spork, a timed cooking-trivia round, a hidden-object hunt around a cluttered room, and a climactic cook-off. Botch a conversation and the game offers to rewind so you can replay the wrong lines, and a full route to romance takes about an hour, with a hidden ending and a set of collectible "11 herbs and spices" to track down along the way. It's free on Steam for Windows and Mac, launched behind an animated trailer, and has simply stayed up ever since as always-on brand content rather than a time-limited campaign.
Results
SteamSpy estimates 200,000–500,000 owners, and players have left 12,608 Steam reviews (11,583 positive, 1,025 negative); the game peaked at 4,263 concurrent players in October 2019, a month after launch.
- 1
Players find the game for free on Steam and launch it by clicking Play Game; the store page lists nine characters to date, a secret ending, secret recipes, and cooking battles among its features.
- 2
The story opens with the player as a new student at a cooking-school academy led by a corgi dean, told as a visual novel: dialogue advances with clicks and periodic menus offer several response choices. In the opening chapter, ten choices in a row set the player's tone and build a bond with classmate Colonel Sanders, and the chapter ends with an in-story test before class heads to the cafeteria.
- 3
Day one continues through two more short chapters of dialogue and light choice menus, including a shared meal and a street encounter with Colonel Sanders. A cooking assignment follows in which the player picks a partner and a dish to prepare, ending in a mishap that sickens the class and cuts the lesson short.
- 4
The story's first minigame is a turn-based battle against a mold-covered monster: the player chooses an action each turn, then decides at the end whether to finish it off or spare it. The chapter closes with the player falling asleep and waking into day two.
- 5
Day two opens with another run of choices, including inventing a fictional ingredient and reacting to an attack by a horse. It builds into a cooking duel where a rival challenges the player to a rapid-fire trivia quiz on cooking facts, played against the clock, ending when a mixer malfunctions.
- 6
A later chapter switches to point-and-click exploration: the player clicks around a room to uncover a secret, then chooses whether to lie or confess when confronted, with honesty unlocking a more intimate scene.
- 7
Day three carries the romance forward through further choices, including a private conversation in which a friend voices disapproval of the relationship, before funneling the player into a final cooking battle where choosing to do things the hard way and summon extra effort leads to the true ending: winning Colonel Sanders' affection and a business-partnership offer. A losing route doesn't end the game outright — it offers to rewind and let past choices be redone — and a full playthrough runs about an hour, short of the store page's claim of multiple hours.
- 8
Across the chapters, the player also gathers "the 11 herbs and spices" and secret recipes, and can unlock a secret ending, giving reason to replay along different branches.
