Japanese Ramen Simulator “has not launched as scheduled,” Wild Dog told players in a Steam announcement, blaming “a delay in Steam’s pre-release review process” for the miss. So the hold-up sits in Valve’s queue, not the kitchen, which is the better way to miss an opening night. The six-player co-op restaurant management sim was due in Steam Early Access on Monday, September 28, 2026, at $14.99 on PC. Neither the store page nor the fact sheet mentions dedicated servers.
The planned unlock was 9:00 AM in Tokyo, which was 8:00 PM ET on Sunday. Wild Dog’s note went up 38 minutes later with no new date or time, and the studio says the next update will come through Steam announcements and its official Discord. The launch price also carries 10% off for the first two weeks, whenever those two weeks turn out to be.
The group math is the draw here. Online co-op takes six players, per the store page, though Wild Dog’s own fact sheet lists one to ten with six recommended. With no server details from Wild Dog yet, I would plan on one member of the group hosting. The crew splits the shop the way a real one does: prep, cooking, serving, customers and cleaning. In-game voice chat fades with distance and muffles through walls, so calling out orders becomes part of the job.
The loop is simple enough to describe in one breath. You prep the soup, cook the noodles and plate each bowl to order. The game then grades the noodle texture, the soup temperature, the aroma and how quickly the bowl reaches the table. Gyoza, rice bowls and beer fill out the menu. Then it gets complicated. A critic can walk in, thieves go for the till, fires break out mid-service, and one of the listed fixes is a shuriken. A solo player can hire part-time NPC employees instead of recruiting friends.
Wild Dog is a young studio, founded in October 2024, and its website lists a team of 20 people. It shipped Keep Digging in September 2025, an eight-player digging game with co-op and PvP, and that one sits at Mostly Positive across more than 3,200 Steam reviews. Its other game in development, DMZ: Nuclear Survival, is an open-world multiplayer survival crafting game, which is a server question for another day. Wild Dog says the ramen game passed 130,000 Steam wishlists before its planned launch, up from the 100,000 it announced on September 24.
Wild Dog expects Early Access to run about six months, with the price rising gradually as major content arrives. Anyone who buys during Early Access pays nothing extra later. The first build carries the core shop: ramen, gyoza, beer, customer service and the layout of the dining room. Overcooked stops at four cooks, and this one is built for six, which is the whole pitch for a big group. It goes on the Friday poll in pencil. Wishlist it on Steam, and Steam will tell you when the shop opens.
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