Cooking Mama: Let's cook! Reviews

I’m an adult and don’t believe in “too old” bc that’s a man’s rule not based on a firm foundation of knowledge that I’ve seen so I disregard those silly “rules” society tries to place on us.

I enjoy trying to learn new techniques in cooking games. Creating one is a goal of mine but my coding is still on a basic level but playing games I’ve done a long time and this game has too many ads that I can’t seem to buy out, can’t remove them. I won’t keep this game long if I can’t get rid of ads permanently. Not going to rent this type of game - ever. I won’t rent items either. Meaning I’ll never make a purchase unless I can accomplish those things.

In my opinion, cute, fun if you can endure lots of ads with no end. Love the combination of things you can do. They cover fishing (kinda weird technique but cute), gardening, selling, making. Wonderful opportunity here has fallen into their greed. It could’ve been perfect for everyone. Kids should be able to have this as an ad-free game that has recipes for a ONE TIME purchase. It’s a (ad cow) cash cow right now.

I have had CookingMama on my phone since i was in NINTH GRADE (age 14). i’m 24- going on 25 now & this is one of the only games/apps i keep on my phone. It’s low stress/anxiety and very calming after a long, crazy day. The recipe packs are super cheap to the point i own every single one. There’s so many recipes to earn/buy that I still haven’t made every recipe, let alone master them all. Not sure what people are talking about when they mention ads? I get one maybe every 30 mins - sometimes i go longer without seeing one. The other ones you can watch to earn coins, which i earn through recipes, the restaurant, the farm, etc. There’s so much to do in one game. Not to mention the major nostalgia value. I don’t know - I guess I don’t understand why everyone’s so butthurt when i’ve been playing this game for at least 15 years and have nooo issue with this version. I feel like y’all are just mad you have to pay for the recipes now instead of earning all of them. It’s an app - like *most* apps, there’s a paywall for certain things. Quit whining.

Side note for the game developers: i would absolutely LOVE some new recipe packs soon! I know they take time to roll out though, so i’ll be patient!

I have played cooking mama for a very long time, of course I deleted CookingMama because I got a bit too old for it. I just got this game today and played it for a while. I miss the old version really bad. In my opinion, I don’t really like the 3D on cooking with mama. I also don’t really like how flashy it is with ads and just everything else. The father that was added to the game is confusing, Idk where he went after I pressed “mama”. I think It’s been 9 years since he went out to get milk from the store, I haven’t seen him. With the restaurant that was added really confused me as well, I just miss the cook book and everything else that made the game so different from the rest. If it’s 2019 and all this great technology that makes games 3D in an amazing way, then spend time on making it look like that than make it look like any other weird 2 year old game. I just want my old cooking mama back to the way to was. I will no longer have CookingMama after this review has been written and this may not be ever read by any of you creators.
I also just started watching anime (As in Naruto Shippuden Season 6-far) so this game hit me hard, I don’t remember cooking mama being in Japan/China! And then she does all this anime-type stuff. I just want to forget about what I have encountered and just remember the old cooking mama I loved. Thank you for your time.

I was looking for some nostalgia and was happy to find that they made an app of this bc I had the game back when I had my ds (who knows where the game or my ds is at this point oof) but I was quickly left feeling underwhelmed. It was not what I had expected at all and in this case it just wasn’t as enjoyable. It’s a cute game on its own but it doesn’t compare to the ds version... there’s too many new characters, the fact that you have all these extra was to get the food on the side, and the fact that’s it’s like a waiting game thing too. The ads I can understand although they’re not that fun to have around every corner and the animation I can understand bc making it into an app requires things like that to change (it does look v v similar to what I remember a lot of the animations to look tho with a lot of the things) but I don’t like how much more stuff there is. It’s also way way too easy to win. Idk I made a dish and even if I was only half caring the more I played and I still got 3 stars every time...
I don’t like giving bad reviews but I was just so sad it’s so much more... what you’d find in CookingMama Store today. It’s not as fun. :/
Needs to be more simple. And not have absolutely everything need to be unlocked. I cold only make like 5 recipes when I started out??

I like this game, a lot. It’s like the DS games to a T, maybe a little harder so it’s not for people who don’t have experience with the game. However sometimes the gameplay can be a bit liberal, I know that you can be noticeably off and it’ll give you a Perfect anyway, and sometimes it doesn’t leave your mistakes and lets you try again if you mess up. But this game is for kids younger than the target age for the previous games and new players, so it’s understandable. The restaurant mode is like diner dash without the stress, and you don’t lose points when new people can’t enter your restaurant. But yes, the restaurant is only open for a certain amount of time a day. There are other things to do but I don’t think it counts towards unlocking recipes. Speaking of that, I’ve heard that you can now unlock recipes through the restaurant mode, and the recipe packs aren’t really that expensive so I’ll be thinking about getting them eventually. Anyway, don’t let the negative reviews turn you off if you really want the game! It really is fun once you get the hang of it.

I love this game, one of the best cooking games I’ve played in a long time. It’s really enjoyable to play and the mini games add another component to the game So it doesn’t get too monotonous. They are also very clever with the way they’ve done their ads, it isn’t forced but you are asked often and can always say no however you get rewards so I find myself often watching them, I really appreciate this as I don’t feel like the ads are forced down my neck. I also love how you can do a lot of things without having to pay at all and the foods are really achievable which is how it should be, often times other games basically force you into using real money to progress which is awful and exploitive. However I do understand where other reviewers come from like the mini games are a little pointless and saying it’s too easy but this is something I like, I play this game to relax and I enjoy it, I wouldn’t want it any other way. On a scale of 1-10 I would say an 9/10 so on this I’ll rate it a 5 :) I would recommend to a friend!

First of all, let me start by saying that I LOVE playing this! It had SO many things you can do! This game is totally 5-star quality! But, I seem to have stumbled upon a glitch or bug. It started when I was playing Cooking Mama. I just finished cooking Salisbury steak and I watched an ad to get coins. Once I finished the ad, I noticed that I had the same amount of coins I had before, which was 999 coins. I shrugged it off and left but, when I can’t back the next day and watched an ad, I still had the same amount of coins! I watched soo many ads to get coins but it was no use. I still had 999 coins. Today, I was working on my restaurant, and I was working really hard serving food to my customers and I had earned 207 coins! Yay! But, I’m worried that I’m not going to get my payment. I took a screenshot and just in case you want to make sure I earned 207, I can show you. I hope this gets fixed soon. Cooking Mama is a great game, and I hope you download it! One of the BEST games I’ve ever played!

Let me start by saying I really love this game. It’s so cute and it’s nice to have something light-hearted to distract me from what’s going on in the world. I like that you can make food but also grow produce, raise animals, and run a restaurant. However, I’m giving this four stars and not five because of a couple major problems. First, the menu is a bit confusing to navigate and I have trouble switching to different locations. Second, the game sometimes freezes up and I have to turn my phone off, then back on to reset it. If there is a way to fix it, even just the crash part, then I’ll update my review. Thanks. :)

One thing is that this game is fun, I really like it because there a bunch of recipes you can make 5/5. But there is one thing, when I first got CookingMama I looked at CookingMama Store and it said it was for 4+ so I was like “ok I can play this game, but when I got in it said this. “Are you 13 or older” then I was confused because CookingMama Store said it was for 4 and older. So can you please change that because there’s nothing 13+ in this game so why do I have to be 13. But other than that it’s a good game but mainly it’s not anything inappropriate this is a family friendly game so why do I need to be 13 and older? I’m guessing it’s because it might be hard for little kids due to the recipe steps but please change that because it makes me feel suspicious about the game but it’s really fun but that’s the only thing I want to change I hope the creators see this so they can change this but good game for a cooking game. :>

The game is amazing and yes, some of the new stuff is a little overwhelming but that’s what makes the game fun because it keeps you busy and you can actually distract yourself. Games ALWAYS update, it’s not gonna ALWAYS stay the same because yes, some of the nostalgia is a bit different, but how are you expected to have MORE fun with it if you just do the same thing over and over? You’ll get bored with it once the nostalgia is over so what’s the point in getting upset that the game changed. Cooking mama is basically an ASIAN game most likely Japanese so it’s GONNA have some ASIAN dishes in there as well. This was targeted at another review I saw because they’re just stupid, “I don’t remember cooking mama having all of this Asian type things in it” though it may not have been obvious back then, what’s wrong with that? Anyways the game is amazing and is proven to actually have some recipes you can try at home!

I downloaded this for the nostalgia (as most have). First thing is the actual recipe making is WAYYY easier. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not 10 and my hand-eye coordination is better, but it’s pretty impossible to mess up a recipe. Easy win there. Also, they’ve added like 20 different “extensions”. You can cook (the original point of the game), fish, grow crops, manage a supermarket, etc. In my opinion, it’s too much. There’s too much going on and I’m still trying to find the relevance of all the extras. They don’t seem to help you progress in the game it’s just a way to pass time. The ads are also a little annoying. You technically only have to watch a few but the option is ALWAYS there. Anything and everything you do an ad is available to speed up the process, or get more coins. All in all if you’re looking for the old game you played on your DS this isn’t it. Still kinda fun for when you’re bored

I used to love this game as a kid, and one day I thought about downloading this again. So I did and I played for 2 hours. In those 2 hours, I cooked only 3 dishes because of the amount of ads and pop ups that would not stop coming on my screen. I know that’s like the whole game industry but it’s not stuff that you can turn on airplane mode and forget about; the game itself is a whole pop up thing. It always wants you to serve at your restaurant or go play a game for stickers. Sometimes you can’t even cook what you want because those arrows keep pointing to another dish until you make them. It frustrates me because as a kid this game was so simple and it was just the cooking. Now it’s all the other stuff and all this extra spending money for dishes and everything. My childhood self would be so mad at me for giving this two stars instead of five, but it simply doesn’t deserve anymore than two; even then it still barely deserves two.

I downloaded this game again after a while, for some nostalgia. I noticed they changed the main menu, and it is A DISASTER! They have like probably at least 10 different places you can go to, and of course they have to fit all the different activities into separate boxes. There simply isn’t enough room, and it’s really cluttered and confusing. They filled up extra space with really useless things in my eyes. The point is to cook, not to farm animals and crops, open a restaurant that should be like an idle game, but isn’t, and all sorts of non original mini games. I wish it was just the cooking, like it used to be. There are so many pop ups for different deals and sales and messages telling you that something is ready in like a farm or something. It’s just all a mess, very unorganized. It’s extremely hard to navigate through CookingMama . I wish it was how it used to be. If they hadn’t done this update, it would for sure be 5 out of 5 stars

Okay, so let’s start with the pros. It’s a very fun game, and you can cook a lot of foods! It also doesn’t have ads that are all over the screen, so I like that. You even farm your own ingredients, so that’s fun.

Now the cons. This game is VERY colorful. Color isn’t a bad thing, but when there’s too much of it, it can be very flashy and a bit of a headache. The colors meld and mash together to make it seem all like just one bog mesh of rainbows and colors. Also, they have a LOT of things flashing. I mean A LOT. It makes the game very confusing, because things are just popping up all over the place and in your face. Also, when they try to show you things like a tutorial, you have those same things popping up in your face during that. It’s very confusing, and I don’t really like it. That’s what ultimately drove me to uninstalling the game, and write this review.

All in all, good game idea, it just NEEDS a tone-down of colors and flashing ad offers/pop-ups.

There is way too much going on on screen. Way too many windows popping up in the span of just 3 seconds. There is no time to even process all the things you can do in this game, it’s like...total insanity. There are pleasant ways to fit in watching ads, but this game makes sure to shove it down your throat at every opportunity. It’s like every open space on the screen is free real estate to bombard you with extremely colorful graphics or something for you to watch an ad.

I miss the old Cooking Mama. This is Cooking Mama on literally crack. All the colors mix together and you could barely process what the bell is going on. The old cooking mama had a start screen, a list of dishes to make and bam you went to go make it. This is just...this is way more than overkill. You’re “fixing” something that wasn’t broken to begin with. Go back to the old Cooking Mama. This is just loud, rainbow vomit.

I honestly have no problem with this game but I do have a suggestion I think it would be cool if there was one cooking mama that cooked and served desserts like cake and cookies and the other one could be for actual meals like chicken and stuff then the last one would be one that served and cooked breakfast please consider these option. I do not want to be rude but it is your chose if you want to have you choose them as in there options that is something I love about this game so yeah I hope whoever reads this is blessed and has a good day. P.S it would be cool if there was more restaurants to own a and if you could buy ingredients and get an outfit and it would be nice if you could travel around the world and meet players and compete. Please consider these options thankyou

I like most reviewers have a certain nostalgia when it comes to playing cooking mama and this game just does not live up to it. It’s cute and quirky and there’s a lot, I mean a LOT to do on this game but it’s just not worth the time. I would expect there to be at least two pages of free recipes to cook. With so little on the menu it gets very boring to play and they try to make up for that with a ton of other outside games and challenges but there’s no real reward for completing these challenges. I feel like the game is definitely missing a few attributes to really call this game cooking mama but it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever played.

This game also bugs a lot which adds on to the initial frustration that you may be having with the game. I am not sure if I will be deleting soon but it’s just not the cooking mama that I know and love.

This game is amazing! It’s cute, simple, and fun. I love the older update where you can fish and have a village. Also, when you cook, there’s no limit! I know that some games have like lives and you only have a limited amount of turns. Normally, games like these are childish, but you’ve made this fun for most ages.
Ideas (recommendations): Able to change characters, cooking mama having a house (like that she can live in and take care of her needs and/or care for her family, SORRY SIMS REFERENCE), also unlocking more dishes, or at least more ways to unlock dishes, finally, I think you should give more specific instructions for the recipes, some of them are so confusing, especially for a newer player.
Over all, the game is great! Thanks for reading this whole thing!!

CookingMama is filled to the BRIM with begging you to watch ads. It’s extremely irritating. Lots of dark patterns to try to get you to submit to watching an ad. Uninstalled as soon as I got a surprise pop-up. Really disappointed. This is a fun game but completely ruined by the ads.

I understand that apps need the ads to stay on CookingMama Store. Seriously, though? Good Pizza, Great Pizza is another food-making app that DOESN'T shove ads down my throat, but nicely asks if you’d like to watch one. I always try to watch them, since they aren’t being rude about it. CookingMama doesn’t do that. If you can’t handle getting pop-ups and being lured in to watch ads, don’t get this game.

I also immediately got overloaded. Too much is going on! Too many buttons! Too many things popping up! I always have a sense that I am completely lost, even if they try to explain everything. Please fix that, at least.

The f2p side of this game only has ten full recipes; the others (that you don’t have to spend real money on, anyway) still require lots of in game currency or stick you with a truncated version of the mini game. Also, buying the full recipe is the only way to unlock the extras, including -difficulty levels-.

The village becomes busywork rather quickly and has little purpose after you max the level of everything. Even more so, if you do choose to buy things in this game, you end up earning so many free coins that they end up becoming worthless in no time. Maybe the coins you donate by earning them when you already have 999 can go toward public works in the village?

I also have some ideas for future recipe packs and themes:
-New Year’s Wishes: Recipe sets based on Health+Long Life, Comfort, Prosperity(luxury foods) and Love
-Shopping Arcade Set: Cafe, Butcher, Bakery, Candy Shop, Fishmonger, Fruit and Vegetable Market.
-Elemental Set: This one’s a bit more high-concept. The four packs therein are based on Earth(mainly vegetables and grains, or with a really homey, “down-to-earth” feel), Water(seafood, frozen things and such), Fire(either cooked with open flame or hot and spicy), and Air(birds, eggs, and dishes that are just light and airy.)

I’m not having any troubles except for one. The mini game where you have to rearrange the fridge in order to put the tray/food in there is proving to be quite difficult. Whenever I’m done organizing the fridge, I need to drag the tray into the emptied out area, but I’m unable to because every time I try to, the home ‘button’ on the bottom of my screen, which is exactly where the tray is, prevents me from doing so. Whenever I try to put the food in the fridge, I just keep being sent to my home screen on my phone and I haven’t been able to find a way around this and I think that this should be fixed somehow to better the playing experience.