Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends

The game was provided by Humble Games for review. Thank you!

I have to say, I am a bit surprised by Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends. I remember when I first started taking a look at the game after receiving a code, and I wasn't completely sold on the concept. It looked a lot like Diner Dash but more relaxed, with some focus outside of the restaurant. I wasn't sold on it at first, but after playing it and realizing the kind of game it is, I found the appeal and am glad I got a chance to play it.

Rolling Hills is designed to be a more relaxing experience where you can sit back and relax while accomplishing some goals. You are a little robot designed to make Sushi, and you want to make yourself known in the world. Luckily, Rolling Hills is a city in need of someone to take over the local Sushi shop. So, with a spring in your step, you take over the restaurant and proceed to start making money, prove yourself as a chef, and help the city thrive.

The story itself is lighthearted and enjoyable, which I was a bit surprised by. I expected it to be more eye-rolling and cringy, but I ended up enjoying a lot of the conversations and how everyone interacted with each other. There are some spots that feel a bit easy to predict, but overall, it is enjoyable to go through and learn about the different people in the village.

The visuals themselves are wonderful, too. The world is vibrant and the aesthetic is really adorable, to the point where I sometimes just liked to look at our robot chef. The robot has the most adorable face, and with a cute aesthetic across the board, it's definitely an appealing world to get lost in. In terms of the visuals and gameplay loop, I feel like the game is targeted at the younger crowd or ones that want an adorable and wholesome game, and on that front, it succeeds in spades.

Speaking of the gameplay, it is a lot more simple than I was initially expecting. I expected that I would need to actually be a bit more active in maintaining the restaurant and doing things like creating the sushi and sweeping up trash, but I was mistaken. When the restaurant is open, you will be focused on serving the correct food to the corresponding customer. Each customer who comes in will want specific tasting food, and you will have to choose the correct one on the conveyor belt and serve it. If there is no correct-tasting meal there, you can reload the conveyor belt. You will also have to wake people up by honking at them, cleaning their tables if they get dirty, and dodging cameras to avoid being stunned.

Rolling Hills can get a little hectic at times when you put everything together, but I would never consider it overwhelming. Each customer you correctly serve will earn you money and experience. The money can be used at various shops to purchase new ingredients to level up the quality of your dishes or decorations to put around your restaurant, which can increase the money you get, the experience you attain, and even make customers more willing to wait longer for their food. Leveling up will get you new recipes, which you can also level up to increase quality. Later on, you will also be able to take customers out to get coffee, which will level them up.

I also thought that the "Make Friends" part of the title was an indication that there's some multiplayer mode, but I was incorrect. There is no multiplayer in this game.

Rolling Hills is all very simple in the long run, and for those who like more complex games, this one will bore you, but if you have the right mindset and are ready for an easy-going experience, you won't regret this one. And overall, it's a pleasure to play on the Steam Deck.

Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends - Steam Deck Performance

Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends is a pleasure to play on the Steam Deck, and in almost every aspect of the game, it performs swimmingly. It can't hit 90 FPS on the Steam Deck OLED, but 60 FPS is no problem in every area, if battery isn't a concern. But there are some changes we can make to achieve a good balance, as well as a 60 FPS stable framerate or a very low battery drain.

I did notice that there were a couple of times that pressing a button didn't go through. There were times I was trying to serve a customer and pressing "A" didn't serve them the dish, which was a bit disheartening as I had 7 other customers to serve at the same time. I did accidentally give a couple of people the wrong dish because of this.

Recommended Settings

When I was playing around with the settings, I noticed that the one that changed the visuals most was Shadows. High and Low shadows looked relatively the same, but you can turn Shadows off for a major performance boost. This does affect how the game looks heavily, and because of that, I elected to leave it on. So, I found a balance. I kept everything at default settings, but set the framerate to 50 FPS and a TDP limit of 9. This felt like a good balance of generally low battery drain (under 15W) with a smooth framerate that feels great and great looking visuals.

60 FPS/Quality Settings

While it is possible to hit 60 FPS, I found it worthwhile to go with a quality/60 FPS combination group of settings. When in any building, performance will be fantastic, while outside of that is where it drops. So going to max settings works really well and gives a wonderful picture with a full 60 FPS.

Battery Saver Settings

On the other hand, there is a group of settings that work perfectly for saving your battery. By turning off Anti-Aliasing and Shadows, while also setting your framerate to 40 FPS, we can set a TDP limit of 6 to get a fantastic battery life of over 6 hours! This is great for long car rides or when you really need to keep attention for a long time.

Accessibility

Rolling Hills allows you to change UI scale, language, and audio sliders, but that's about it.

However, it does support 16:10 resolutions and has controller support along with cloud saves. There are no HDR settings.

Conclusion

Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends is a cozy, relaxing Diner Dash-esque experience that is a lot of fun, if you have the right mindset. The way you experience the story, as well as the balance of interacting with the villagers, customizing your restaurant, upgrading dishes with ingredients, and serving your customers in a Diner Dash-esque style, works well within the context. This isn't a game for hardcore players for sure, and it sometimes feels a little too simple, but it is still very enjoyable and kept my attention once I realized the kind of game it is. And with some small changes, it is an awesome experience on the Steam Deck that I can happily recommend!

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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