Cooking sims run the gamut of intensity, but if Diner Dash is at the sweating-bullets end of the spectrum, Galaxy Burger is at the other end. This space-themed burger flipping game, developed by Galactic Workshop, is dripping with the weird — astronaut cats, delivery bots, aliens, and elvish humans are your customers across the various planets in our galaxy, rendered in 16-bit art.
With each burger joint you open up, you encounter new customers drawn in various art styles — you’ll meet plenty of chibi Robo-Kitties on Venus, while the Earthlings who reside both on Earth and on the moon are Rick and Morty-esque. Some customers are shy, but, importantly, all customers are chill and relatively easy to please. These burger joints are like a pizza shop in a college town run by slow-moving, yet ultimately effective, stoners. There’s no rush, so as the player, you can really home in on lining that burger up perfectly with the bun, or nailing your ketchup art.
Galaxy Burger defaults to a mode where you earn wages and tips for correctly making orders for one day at a time. You know how many customers you’ll see that day from the start of the round, and you can take as long as you want in real time to complete it. In short, it’s all the satisfaction of a Diner Dash or Cooking Mama game, with none of the stress. The money does function as a motivating reward, though — you can use it to unlock new planets (I’ve unlocked up to Earth so far) and buy coupons for more tips and faster cook times, among other buffs that last for one day each.
Online co-op, endless mode, and time-sensitive mode — where customers judge you on order accuracy and speed — make Galaxy Burger feel like a full game despite the simple premise. I look forward to the possibility of updates that might bring more variety in dialogue with customers, or a challenge mode to play in between the relaxing default-mode rounds. But as it stands now, it’s got a loose grip on my attention, and I like that it’s designed to be respectful of my time. It’s become a mainstay in my rotation of games I play while also half-watching an episode of television I’ve already seen and having a conversation with my husband. Oh, is that just me? OK…
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