Godlike Burger Indie Video Game Review

I am not sure why, but in recent years I have been a big fan of video games that have utilized the cooking/restaurant theme. Outside of video games I have little interest in cooking, but for some reason it works really well in video games. From games like the Overcooked series to Cook, Serve, Delicious and so on, there are a surprising number of good indie cooking/restaurant video games out there. Most of these games follow a similar formula, but they are still quite satisfying. Today I am looking at Godlike Burger which releases tomorrow. What initially intrigued me about Godlike Burger is that it seemed to share a lot of things in common with the cooking games that I enjoy the most, while also having a twist. Godlike Burger is a deliciously fun cooking game with a fun twist that is a blast to play, even though it is held back some by some of its rogue-lite mechanics.

In Godlike Burger you play as a burger chef who is trying to make a name for themselves in the galaxy. Each day you head into work serving customers that come in for a meal. Customers will place their order. You will then have to cook up the burger patty and pick up the other ingredients they requested from the fridge. You then must assemble the burger and serve it in time before they leave. If you succeed you will receive payment for the burger and may even get a tip.

This might seem like your typical video game where you run a restaurant, but there is one catch. Your burgers might be the tastiest in the galaxy, but that is because they come from the customers themselves. Why pay for your burgers when you can just kill your customers and get a cheap source of meat. You can dispose of your customers in a number of ways. You can use your hard earned money in order to buy traps which can dispose of customers without getting your hands dirty. Otherwise you could just use your trusty cleaver and do the deed yourself.

While you have to keep up your stock of meat, you also need to be careful as customers don’t look kindly on chefs who kill their own customers. Customers will notice you killing other customers out in the open or leaving dead bodies all over your restaurant. Some may attack you and others will call the police to investigate. If the heat ever gets too bad you can either bribe the police or pick up and travel to a new planet.

No matter what you decide to do you need to be careful as the game is a rogue-lite. You only have a limited amount of health. Between days you can spend money to heal yourself. Should you die you will lose all of your money on hand, the meat stored in your fridge, and even the prestige that your restaurant has earned. Death doesn’t mean the end though as you can start your journey again with the help of any upgrades or traps that you already unlocked being available to you from the very beginning of your next run.

When I first saw Godlike Burger I was intrigued as it looked like it had a lot of potential. I had pretty high expectations for the game, and it actually lived up to them for the most part.

Much of the game plays like your typical cooking/restaurant game. You are given an order and you try to fill it as quickly as possible. You need to carefully look at the order so you can pick the right type of meat and other ingredients. You then need to assemble the burger and get it served before the customer leaves. This starts off pretty easy, but it gets considerably more difficult as you progress in the game as you have more things to consider.

For the most part Godlike Burger isn’t drastically different from other similar games. If you have played one of these type of restaurant games before, you likely will feel right at home. It may not be the most innovative gameplay, but it is quite satisfying. I don’t know what it is exactly, but trying to complete orders as quickly as possible is really fun. If you are a fan of these type of games I see no reason why you wouldn’t enjoy this aspect of Godlike Burger.

Where the game differentiates itself is in the fact that you basically have to hunt for your meat. On the surface this seems like a dark twist for the genre, but the game plays it in a cartoony way for the most part. I generally think this is an interesting twist for the genre, and was something that really intrigued me about the game. In the past I looked at Cannibal Cuisine which utilized a similar premise, but I think Godlike Burger does it better.

I think the mechanic works well for Godlike Burger as it feels like more than just a gimmick. Real effort was put into the mechanic rather than it just being a little thing added in to try and differentiate the game. I think this comes from two things. First the addition of traps really makes this aspect of the game. It is satisfying to activate traps around your restaurant to catch unsuspecting customers. This gets even better once you get the proximity sensors or the remote control that allows you to remotely trigger traps. This allows you to focus on cooking and killing customers at the same time.

The other thing that makes the killing aspect of the game work is that you usually can’t just go on a murder spree and get away with it. Especially early in the game you need to be careful and pick your times to kill customers. You need to find opportunities when customers are alone and there are no witnesses so you can kill them and dispose of the bodies without anyone noticing. Usually you can get away with it pretty easily if you are observant of your surroundings. It can be suspenseful though when you have just killed a customer and you see another slowly moving in your direction. In a way this aspect of the game kind of feels like a puzzle as you figure out how to time your kills to get away with them. The game does a really good job making this feel like a core mechanic in the game rather than just a gimmick to stand out.

When it comes to Godlike Burger’s difficulty I think it kind of depends. I will admit that when I first started playing the game there was a degree of information overload. When you first start playing the game there is a lot to keep track of at any time. Between making the burgers, killing enough customers without being detected to have enough meat on hand, and dealing with the other daily challenges; there is a lot to deal with where you can’t possibly get everything done in a day. This will likely lead you to getting sloppy and eventually your death.

As you advance in the game though things become quite a bit easier. When you start to purchase some of the upgrades for your kitchen as well as the traps, things become considerably more streamlined. In particular there are a number of kitchen upgrades which make your life considerably easier. In fact after enough upgrades there will be times where you don’t have anything that you have to do. The upgrades really do make it feel like your time was put to good use allowing you to run a better restaurant. In a way the game actually becomes a little easy. That gets reset a little each time you go to a new planet as you have to figure out how to best approach the new planet. The game generally does a good job making you feel like you are getting better at the game, and thus giving you more things to juggle.

This is all accentuated by the fact that the game’s controls work really well for the most part. Outside of occasionally getting temporarily stuck in the doors (leading to a death in one run), I really had no complaints about the controls. The controls are really straightforward and work well. When you die in the game is is generally your fault because you took one too many risks.

As for the game’s length, I can’t give you a definitive length for a number of reasons. First I haven’t made it to the last planet yet. Next like a lot of rogue-lite games, how you approach the game can have a pretty big impact on how long the game takes. You can play the game more cautiously in order to acquire more money and buy upgrades. Otherwise you could take more risks leading to more rewards or death which returns you to the beginning of your journey. The game has quite a few planets and content though, so I don’t think you will have to worry about getting enough time out of the game. To reach the final planet along with purchasing all of the upgrades will likely take quite a while. Each day takes a couple minutes and you can stop after any day to come back to your run later. Basically if the premise interests you at all, I think you should easily get your money’s worth out of Godlike Burger.

I had a blast playing Godlike Burger, but it does have some issues. Most of these issues I would attribute to the game’s rogue-lite mechanics. I have never been a huge fan of the rogue-lite genre, so players who like the genre more will likely appreciate them more. In theory I don’t mind them in Godlike Burger. The idea of you trying to build up your restaurant to gain recognition to move onto more profitable planets works well with the premise. I don’t know if a level based game would have worked as well.

At the same time though, I wasn’t a huge fan of losing most of my progress whenever I died. Thankfully all of your upgrades stay with you when you die. This helps a lot as even after dying it still feels like your work was worthwhile as more upgrades will make future runs easier as you can automate more parts of the process. The upgrades have a noticeable impact on making your job easier. Still it sucks losing your progress and starting again from the beginning.

There are two main reasons I don’t like this aspect of the game. The first come from the fact that each new planet will regularly require new types of meat that you don’t have access to. Your first day or two on each planet can be a struggle as you really need to focus on killing a lot of customers in order to get enough meat for future days. At times it can be quite difficult to build up a stockpile where you don’t have to worry about killing customers for a while. Each time you die in the game, you basically have to go through this again at least until you buy the corresponding upgrade.

The other problem comes from having to complete missions to unlock the next planet. These seem to be completely random and some are considerably easier than others. Therefore you will be forced to play some of the early locations multiple days even though they are no longer challenging. You will play these locations just to complete the missions and acquire prestige in order to move onto the next planet. Even though it might not be that hard to get back to your previous planet, it takes time as you need to do this work in order to get enough to move on. This ultimately forces you to replay the earlier planets quite a bit even if they are no longer challenging to you.

The last thing I want to quickly bring up is the fact that Godlike Burger doesn’t have any multiplayer at this point. While the game is still really fun as a single player game, it is a shame that there is no multiplayer support for the game. I think the game would have been a great cooperative game like the Overcooked series. Hopefully the developers consider adding multiplayer at a future date as I think that would make the game even better.

I was genuinely kind of surprised by how much I enjoyed Godlike Burger. The game is not going to be for everyone, but it is a fun and interesting twist on your typical restaurant/cooking video game. The basics are pretty much the same as most games from the genre, even though they are still really fun. Having to kill your customers for the ingredients to make your food though is where the game really stands out. To do well in the game you need to be strategic in how you kill off customers. This leads the game to kind of feel like a puzzle. Along with great controls, Godlike Burger is a really fun game. The game’s biggest problems come from the rogue-lite mechanics. While they make sense for the game, it sucks when you die and end up having to start again from the very beginning.

My recommendation for Godlike Burger is quite simple. If you generally don’t care for cooking/restaurant video games or don’t care for the “kill your customers” premise, I don’t know if Godlike Burger will be the game for you. If you are even a little intrigued by the game though, I think you will really enjoy it and should consider picking up Godlike Burger as you will likely really enjoy it.