Burger Bustle

Burger Bustle is a time management game where you get to manage the day-to-day activities of various burger joints around the country. You start the game running a beachfront property, but will soon get to do business in the wild west, in a winter town and even on a space station! Along the way, you will need to manage your employees, the types of burgers and condiments that you offer, as well as what extras such as drinks and fries you want to sell.

The way Burger Bustle works is a bit different from other time management games though, giving it a unique feel and freshness. In most other time management games, you do almost everything yourself, which works fine because your customers usually want things done in a linear fashion. For example in a typical restaurant game, you need to seat your customers, take their order, serve the food, take their cash then clean the tables.

Things are different in Burger Bustle, where the customers place their orders at the counter. Sometimes their order is pretty simple, maybe just a simple hamburger. But you will get customers who buy for their whole family, with orders that include 3 different burgers with different toppings, 2 different soft drinks as well as an ice cream dessert! There's no way a single person will be able to cook up that entire order, hence the presence and importance of your employees.

At each level, your burger joint may have up to 3 burger frying stations, up to 3 burger topping stations, up to 3 stations selling extras such as fries and drinks, as well as a packing counter. Each of these stations needs an employee there before the food can be prepared. Unfortunately, your restaurant (like most restaurants out there) is understaffed. You can get your employees to multitask, dragging them from the burger station after they finish cooking the burgers, then getting them to prepare the drinks and sides. That slows down the whole process, and may cause your customers to become unhappy as well as create an ever-growing order backlog.

You can hire more employees using the money you earn from selling burgers though, having an employee posted at each of the more popular stations. Unfortunately, each subsequent employee costs more and will cut more into your profit margins. At each level, one of the level goals will be to earn a certain amount of cash in a set time. Hiring more employees might make your restaurant more efficient, but paying these guys means that you will take longer to reach your cash goals. Balancing this requires good planning and strategy.

In most levels, you can also choose which stations you want to operate. You might start the level with just a hamburger station, with the option to buy a fish burger station, cheese and tomato topping stations and a drinks station. If you don't open extra stations, you won't need to hire employees to man them, but you might suffer an order backlog. If every customer orders a hamburger (and since the hamburger station can only cook one burger at a time), they might be in for a long wait while their order gets cooked. Again, strategic planning is required to decide whether you should invest your cash, and where you want to invest it, be it hiring more employees or opening more stations.

There is also a competitor ladder and award system in Burger Bustle game. The better you do at each level (by achieving speed records and having more customers leave the restaurant happy), you will earn points. When you earn more points than a rival restaurant, you climb the ladder and win an award. These awards usually come with a bonus upgrade for your restaurant, such as candy to keep your waiting customers happy, or coffee to make your employees work faster.

Burger Bustle has graphics that are vibrant and crisp, and is accompanied by a great soundtrack. The voice acting is really good too, with some humor thrown in as well. Overall, Burger Bustle adds a unique twist to the time management game genre, keeping it fresh and fun. And with over 70 levels (each level capable of being played in many ways), this game will be able to satisfy you for days!

Review by Steven H. Ng