Cooking Mama Burger Shop Game Review

Admit it: you’ve gone through a ‘cooking games’ phase in your life. You’ve combed through app stores at some point in search for the perfect cooking game that will satisfy your chopping, frying, baking, dashing, and serving addiction.

Amirite or amirite?

And therefore Facebook Instant Games can’t not have a cooking game! Finally, a month after Messenger Games was launched, they served us one: Cooking Mama Burger Shop.

The Cooking Mama series was developed by Office Create, a Japanese software company based in Yokohama. Cooking Mama Burger Shop is the version that they designed specifically for Instant Games.

Graphics

The characters in the game are drawn in a ‘chibi’-like style that made us go “Kawaii!”.

The eponymous character Mama is a pink head scarf-wearing, apron-donning woman who is too cute to have a nose. Her big smile makes you believe that she can serve you the juiciest, yummiest burger in town.

But she’s not the biggest stereotype in this game. The customers are.

For example, the chillest customer is a young man wearing a beanie. He’s the guy who doesn’t mind too much if his order takes too long to arrive. And he really does look like that type of guy.

Then there’s the guy in the business suit who literally means business. He wears a frown the moment he shows up, and you better serve him quick or else!

We’ll let you guess the temperament of the chubby-cheeked lady with the thick make-up.

The food looks scumpdillyicious. You better not be hungry when you play this game, or you’ll be craving for a burger before one round is over!

Sound

They chose background music that can probably be classified as ragtime, reminiscent of the likes of “The Entertainer”. It’s the kind of piano tune that could probably also be effectively used in a Charlie Chaplin comedy scene where a bar fight occurs. Which we feel may actually be appropriate for a game that has customers getting angry when you don’t serve them immediately.

Nothing notable about the other SFX though, so no comment on that.

Gameplay

Being especially designed for Instant Games, Cooking Mama Burger Shop has a number of things that make it different from most other cooking games.

You are given only 60 seconds to try and serve as many customers as possible, much shorter than the usual amount of time allotted by other cooking games.

It has a very limited number of ingredients and menu items. There is no unlocking of more ingredients, and no upgrading of cooking equipment. Everything is already accessible from the first time you play.

Even though this is a much simpler cooking game than others, playing it makes you really feel like it was made by people who have been creating cooking games for a long time. Tapping and swiping on the screen just feels natural and truly enjoyable.

Our main complaint though are those special items/boosters that you can use to increase your high score. Using them is not very intuitive. For example, the one whose icon looks like a clock with a plus sign… we thought it added more time, but it did not. We later figured out it stopped time for a few seconds.

Did the tutorial teach what those boosters did? If it did, we were probably not paying attention because we were so excited.

Fun Factor and Replayability

We might be biased because we like cooking games and other time management games, but there’s really no denying that Cooking Mama is simply fun to play. It doesn’t matter that the characters are stereotyped, that there’s nothing to upgrade or unlock. This is a well-designed mini game that we’ll probably keep on playing with friends on Messenger.

Conclusion

Kawaii graphics, enjoyable piano tune, smooth gameplay, and a whole lot of fun. Despite its minor flaws (like it non-intuitive special items), Cooking Mama Burger Shop is a truly enjoyable game. We give it a 9/10.

Do you agree about the flaws or do you think we’re nitpicking? Reply in the comments below!