Review: Galaxy Burger is a stress-free cooking sim that you can play alone or with friends

At first glance, Galaxy Burger looks like another fast-paced, chaotic cooking game that leaves you screaming at your friends for orders. While you can certainly play with your friends, this game thrives on a slow pace that is forgiving of mistakes.

In Galaxy Burger, you’re tasked with setting up cafes across – spoiler – the galaxy. You’ll visit the planets in the solar system as well as some star formations to bring burgers to hungry terrestrials. After taking their order, you’ll build up their requests by cooking on various appliances and eventually juggle several orders at once.

There are no time limits and no stress, and if you make mistakes, you’re not harshly penalized. This isn’t the type of game that requires you to buy upgrades to better your cafe. Instead, you get better by reputation. The more people you service, the better your cafe becomes.

Galaxy Burger is out of this world on our cozy scale

From an outside point looking in, Galaxy Burger looks like a game that mixes the chaotic multiplayer aspects of Overcooked! with the timed requests of Cake Mania. Yes, I had to blow the dust off that last one.

As someone who loved the vibe of Cake Mania, but loathed the time management aspect of it, Galaxy Burger offers a breath of fresh air.

Any time I’m given something to do at my own pace, I’m a fairly happy person. However, if you thrive in that kind of atmosphere, Galaxy Burger offers a timed mode. Unfortunately, that’s something that you’ll have to unlock. But, it does appear to unlock after 3 stars of reputation.

Booting up Galaxy Burger, you’re shown a line of planets and star systems that you’ll eventually be able to cultivate for your burger empire. Opening up a shop, you’re flung right into the thick of burger making.

There are two sections of the screen; the stove and the customer. There’s a handy button at the bottom that lets you flick through them. At the stove, you’ve got toppings, condiments, and the star of the show: patties.

Once someone puts an order in, you fling down a patty and wait for it to finish cooking. You’ll notice that quite a few items have timers. Patties are always cooked, but even the bread may need to be toasted or the cheese “griddled”. They all have their own timers and you can go over on them, but you still have more than enough time to catch it before they overbake.

Did I mention you can deep fry things?

Thankfully, you don’t really have to hover over something, you just have to listen out for a ding that lets you know something is done cooking. Once you’ve got all the things that need to be warmed up finished, you can assemble them.

There are specific recipes to follow, but sometimes the customer wants adjustments or makes up their own burger entirely. You don’t have to worry about forgetting anything because the ticket can be kept up the entire time. Even the basic recipes can be pinned to the top of the screen so if someone asks for a “Galaxy Burger”, you can open it up in real time.

As you complete orders, you’ll be paid in coins and acquire a reputation. With enough reputation, you’ll earn stars (up to 5) for your little burger joint. Getting more stars does a few things for you. The most important is that you’ll likely notice more recipes, more ingredients, or even more cooking stations.

But, on the second star, you open up a way to spend some of your coins. Normally, you’re saving those coins to open up a shop on another planet, but you may fancy buying a coupon. These coupons are random and only last for a day, but they can be beneficial to you.

The coupons can change your menu to be vegan, which means you may not have to cook patties so often. Or, it might lower the cost of ingredients, among many other perks. I, personally, never found a coupon I wanted to spend my coins on because I wanted to open up more shops.

As you can imagine, the further out from your first cafe on Mercury, the more complex the shop gets. You’ll open up more ways to cook things (like deep frying), have more lanes to manage, and have far more ingredients to work with. 

We’re going to conquer the galaxy one burger at a time.

Even at the height of juggling customers, appliances, and ingredients, you don’t have to worry about being stressed. I’ve ignored customers before to work on a previous order with zero penalty. Hell, I got mixed up on who I should serve food to and gave entirely wrong orders to someone with no penalty other than having to remake the food.

Galaxy Burger is bursting with options when it comes to recipes and how to make them. The art style is a charming pixel style with several different character types to keep things interesting. The only thing it didn’t shine on was music and I’m more than happy to put my own bops into it.

Unfortunately, I don’t have friends to play games with, much less 7 of them, so I wasn’t able to check out the multiplayer functionality. But, the multiplayer aspect existing at all and allowing for so many people is phenomenal. Whether you want to veg out by yourself or with a companion, Galaxy Burger is a solid choice for cozy gaming.

If you’d like to try out Galaxy Burger for yourself, you can get it on Steam for $11.99. If this isn’t your speed, you can check out our latest review: Throne and Liberty.