Double Cheeseburger, Medium Fries is surprisingly delightful. When I was looking at the ItchIO page for this game, I wondered if it would throw me into flashbacks as a teen, where I worked a few jobs here and there in kitchens and at counters. It managed to perfectly capture that experience–without all the real-life boredom–and add some entertaining gameplay, for what is actually a pretty simple but good game concept. If you’ve ever worked in fast food, food service, or really any customer service, you’ll probably find this game highly relatable, especially if you’ve had the kind of shifts where you can’t wait for it to end.
What is this game?
It’s less glossy than some of the restaurant simulators commonly found on Android or Nintendo Switch since this game is more of a step into the weird and wonderful indie game genre on ItchIO. No matter your reason for arriving at this review, this game is worth resting on its own laurels and presentation.
I mention the personal experience factor because I have had time in food service for about 4-5 years. Most of you in the fast food and coffee shop service industry, as I was, are typical teenage to twenty-something name badge wearers by default. That stereotype works here, because this game, in all its indie pixel charm, is pretty darn close to the real thing.
Double Cheeseburger, Medium Fries: Orientation
Play as Penelope, a fast-food worker who’s called into work on her day off as the only alternative to being terminated. So, she goes in and there’s nobody else working besides her and the manager who does nothing. Take your time and work through lines of customers who are pretty authentic in their variations and orders.
If you’ve played a restaurant sim before, there are usually your typical orders (burger, fries, drink), and a weird one (two buns packed with lettuce and an ice cream cone.) Those are here. And it is pretty fun trying to figure out the mechanisms of the game that make preparing the food work.
The first task you’re introduced to is making a burger. I love the way this game handles cooking because there are some genuine physics mechanics to all the food prep tasks, like literally moving around a spatula to flip a burger; if you flip too quickly it will go flying in the air and other such examples. You’ll see when you try it, it’s really fun.
Do You Want Anything Else With That?
The customers are generally pretty patient, which makes for a relaxing-ish experience that you can play to chill out. If dialogue is of interest, and you really do work in a fast-food restaurant (at least as a cashier, maybe kitchen but that’s its own thing), you can learn a few things about working under pressure in this game. Penelope is patient–as cool as a side of pickles in fact.
The game just reached a finished status 3 days ago, so no need to stand by while in dev. I played for half an hour and there was plenty of content left for the long run, although I do not know personally how expansive the storyline is.
Lunch Time
Anyway, it’s a game about fast food, and this pixel art style with a play-in-browser presentation doesn’t really need a review because you’ll be jumping in for its rogue-lite burger grind and polished service industry angst right away. It’s cute and fun, and I give it the Dave Pizza 8/8 slices.
If you want to check out Double Cheeseburger, Medium Fries by Author Josh66 at Itch.IO (heads up, this site has some crazy topics) today for whatever level of support you can give. Here is a link to that game page https://josh66.itch.io/double-cheeseburger-medium-fries
I’m Dave Pizza. Thanks for reading my site. Peace Out. More at MrDavePizza.com
