Ask a casual fan to name the Straw Hats and Brook usually arrives last, somewhere after Franky and just before someone remembers Jinbe. The Soul King has spent years as the crew’s punchline and its heart at the same time, and he rarely gets a stage that is only his. A new Brook mini-game in One Piece: Grand Gourmet gives him one, though it’s smaller than the headlines suggest.
Brook has not been handed his own game. The release is a mini-game called “45 Degrees!!” built into ONE PIECE: Grand Gourmet, the restaurant management sim from Kairosoft and Bandai Namco. The task is simple and a little absurd. Brook walks toward a ship’s mast, and you have to tilt his body to exactly 45 degrees.
The joke is the lean, a pose that started as a one-off and became one of his best-known gags. Few characters could carry a whole game mechanic on a single pose, and Brook can.
It’s a small thing, but it’s the first time the game’s own systems revolve around him rather than around Luffy or Sanji. That counts for something in a series that spends most of its screen time on the same four faces.
How Brook Became One of the Most Overlooked Straw Hats
He joined late, at Thriller Bark, and his arc is the quietest kind of emotional. He is a man who has been dead, came back through the Yomi Yomi no Mi, and spent decades alone with a promise to a whale named Laboon. That backstory is one of the series’ best, but it arrives in a single arc and then recedes.
After that, his role becomes comic relief and a musical heartbeat for the crew. Fans love him, but the plot rarely needs him at the front. A mini-game built on his oldest gag fits that pattern: the joke gets a spotlight, even if the character’s depth doesn’t.
Inside Brook’s Unexpected Spotlight in Grand Gourmet
Grand Gourmet is a cosy management sim in Kairosoft’s pixel-art style. You help Sanji and the crew run Baratie Number Two, gathering ingredients, inventing dishes and decorating the interior. The game features more than 400 One Piece characters as staff and customers.
According to one early review, mini-games open up once you unlock Brook and build his room. Some are fights where villains end up working in your kitchen, and others are races on a horse-like fish creature called a yagara. That review also notes you can easily miss several of them if you don’t recruit the right characters. So “45 Degrees!!” is likely one of several quick games tied to Brook’s room, not a lone attraction.
The sim is available on Switch, Switch 2, Steam, iOS and Android. At launch, Steam user reviews sat at 72% positive across about 650 reviews, which is solid but not glowing. That score is a moving target.
Should One Piece Fans Buy Grand Gourmet for Brook?
No, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. If your only interest is a Brook-centered game, this isn’t it. One mini-game, even a funny one, doesn’t justify $19.99.
It makes sense if you already enjoy Kairosoft’s management loop, or if you want a relaxed, pixel-art way to see 400-plus characters in one place. Brook’s mini-game is then a bonus that rewards the fans who noticed him all along.
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Conclusion
Brook is a Straw Hat with a strong story and almost no solo material, and Bandai Namco already has a licence and an audience. A game built around his music, his Laboon promise or his skeleton-sized comic timing would be a bigger swing. This mini-game shows the idea works. It doesn’t yet prove anyone is willing to bet on it.
