Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
When I realized the type of game this was, I decided to just run it on the bottom of my screen during my streams. My intent was to just go through the whole event to see if I could get all of the upgrades during the event, and then I would leave my feedback at the end. However, I now have all of the currently available upgrades and feel like I've messed with it enough to give some proper feedback now. So rather than wait... here I am!
So first, I want to note that I was very confused when I started it up. While the game has starting values for the four different properties of a ramen, one thing it doesn't have is a default price! Instead, it sets it to 0. This means that, if you're not paying attention, you could waste a lot of time and not earn any money. However, I was also confused when... it seemed like my customers weren't paying me what I had priced the ramen at. I eventually realized this was wrong, but the nature of them dropping multiple coins really threw me off. I feel like this would be better if they just dropped one coin and that coin was what the cost of the ramen was.
I also found that the way the ingredients were to work was confusing. It took me a while to finally figure out the ideal settings to make customers happy, but there's something about the aspect of "they won't pay full price if it's not good" that doesn't sit with me. I think it'd be better if they still paid the price, but that if they really enjoyed it that they're willing to give more. I know tipping isn't a thing in Japanese culture, but the use of English writing in this means you intend for it to reach an English audience. In North America, tipping is absolutely a thing. Thus, I would say this idea could work for a game.
Next... uhh, what does the New Menu button even do? I've tried pressing it but it does nothing. Is this something that hasn't been put into the game yet? If so, why have it there now? It just creates confusion.
One thing that drove me insane was how insanely picky customers were about price. When I set my ramen to 5 yen, they were happy with it. Yet the moment I made it 6 yen? Everyone says it's too expensive! Now correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a yen about equal to a cent in USD? So I'm selling ramen at 5 cents? That feels insanely cheap! For every customer to balk at a price of 6 yen feels weird to me. Now I know the reason behind this, too. It's because you want money to be slow earning. You don't want a player to speed through the game. After all, it's meant as a sort of productivity tool. It takes time. Being able to set really high prices would also devalue the need to add new menu items down the road (which is what I assume we'll eventually be able to do). However, I just feel like there should be some balance here where increasing the price will cause some customers to be turned away but not everyone. You could then scale it where the higher the price is from an acceptable price point, the more turn away. This would mean that the player needs to be even more productive to generate more potential customers to get more potential sales. Wouldn't that fit with the idea of what you want out of this?
Lastly... as someone who doesn't know a lot about ramen, it'd be nice if the game had something built in that explained what the different ingredients did and maybe even explained how they can work together. Right now you have noodles just listed as "Noodles" but I think it'd be cool if, down the road, you had different types of noodles and could use the game to teach how different ingredients work with different noodles. That way it not only would be a fun productivity tool but would even impart knowledge of making ramen to those who use it, thereby informing them of what Japanese people look for when it comes to good ramen and giving them a new appreciation for it.
Overall, fun experience! I hope it goes places! :D