Happy's Humble Burger Farm

Review

When I started playing Happy’s Humble Burger Farm (HHBF from now on) I didn’t exactly know what I was getting into. Sure, it was obvious to me this was a fast food simulator mixed with Five Nights at Freddy’s nightmare creatures, but I couldn’t imagine there was a whole city built around it.

We play as a typical employee during his first day of work at the HHBF restaurant. After a short tutorial explaining controls and procedures, we wake up in our apartment. To reach our working place we can’t use any vehicle but only walk, which is a good way to get a first look at New Elysian City. This is a sandbox area with multiple blocked paths and closed doors that can only be unlocked by progressing further with the story. Yes, HHBF is not a classic fast food simulator and doesn’t even have a multiplayer mode (not yet, at least). It’s a well-crafted story-driven experience set in a dark and surreal city you will get to know when you are done cooking.

The restaurant is obviously the place where the core gameplay shows up. It’s nothing complex, but requires great time management, organizing skills and fast movements. We can complete a few tasks before opening the restaurant, though all of them are optional and reward us with only few more bucks. Soon after opening the restaurant, our timer starts and we need to survive by serving as many orders as possible. Day after day, more tasks and random events will appear, making our job more complicated, while creepy shadow figures will often stress us by turning off lights and appliances.

A good suggestion for starters: turn on the appliances and immediately put salmon nuggets & fries into the frier, so they are ready to be picked. Place loys of hot pies & cookies into the oven and fill soft drinks & slushies. Don’t worry, they won’t go to waste. Also remember to always run, never walk.

Every mistake will count as an infraction. Make three of them and Happy will be “unhappy” with our poor performance, meaning she will appear and try to kill us. The tutorial teaches us how to beat the cow by feeding her with rotten patties, but she can only move when we are not watching her. Meanwhile, the restaurant will become a dark nightmare filled with creepy noises and messages.

Difficulty is rather low, which is maybe for the best since the focus is to move on with the story. Even if we die, we will just respawn at the beginning of our shift, so there isn’t really any penalty. There are also a few bosses that turn cooking into a combat mechanic, requiring us to prepare food and feed them while avoiding enemy attacks. Again, it’s nothing difficult considering that we can buy food and drinks to restore our health and increase speed.

I can’t deny that the cooking procedure feels a bit too simple. We have all the ingredients ready and we just need to throw them together to make the required meal. Shifts are too short and there is not much food variety to make us feel engaged while working. That’s my only complaint, because everything else outside the fast food routine is made so well that it makes this game a great immersive sim.

After ending our daily shift we can safely return to the apartment, though we will be tempted to explore the city as it becomes more accessible. We can spend our hard earned money buying a few items from pawn shops and vending machines or we can look for collectables that help us understand the lore better. It is also possible to find hidden tokens that can be used to purchase upgrades for the restaurant, like faster cooking times. We can meet NPCs around the city, but they only make weird noises and we can’t interact with them.

There are also some references and fine touches that I don’t want to spoil (one particularly when quitting the game from the main menu), so exploration is always encouraged and while the overall atmosphere is always surreal and creepy, I appreciated the absence of cheap jumpscares.

Speaking about the issues, there were only a few glitches (men exploding behind the walls) and some controller inputs being innacurate or even broken, so using keyboard and mouse is much better. There is also a general lack of UI info and directions, so we must often trust our instincts to find the correct path that pushes the story further.

Graphics look good enough. Personally I’m not a fan of old-school graphics, which I think have been abused in many videogames only to give them an appearence of aesthetic, but I must say that here it fits particularly well with the horror elements and the story structure. By any means, HHBF is not a long game and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. Finishing the game will unlock an endless mode, which is exactly what it sounds like, providing infinite hours of Happy’s fast food slavery.

Review written by Sonic Punk for Zeepond.com

Happy's Humble Burger Farm Steam Store Page