Preview: Burgie’s Cozy Kitchen brings hungry customers right to your desktop

Burgie’s Cozy Kitchen turns your desktop into a little walk-up diner. The only item on your menu is a burger and you have to make it well! As you play, you’ll earn money to unlock more ingredients or ways to help you in your burger production. Customers will walk up to a window, request their order, and then it’s up to you to cater to their needs. Your customers are picky and leave reviews, so try to get their order to them quickly, but correctly.

Burgie’s Cozy Kitchen: Ready to take your order!

Burgie’s Cozy Kitchen has a lot of interesting mechanics to it. Not only can you minimize the game so that the window your customers walk up to is reduced to a small square on your screen, but there are different modes as well.

• Frenetic Mode: This mode will have customers pop up continuously and they’re more picky. They’ll, also, give you less money. RIP.
• Normal Mode: This mode will have a customer pop up at least once every 15 minutes. They won’t get upset by how long it takes you to make something.
• Pomodoro Mode: In this mode, you can set the timer for when you want your customers to show up. This is best used in conjunction with other tasks you’re working on.
• Streamer Mode: In this mode, you can connect the game to your Twitch community so that they’re the ones making orders. It makes it a perfect little party-type game to play with your audience.

With the four different modes, Burgie’s Cozy Kitchen can cater to just about anyone so long as they enjoy making burgers. As you play, you’ll be able to unlock more ingredients that will make your burger sell for more, but make it more complicated to make. Thankfully, you can unlock more utilities to help combat customer needs. Lastly, you can unlock decorations to spruce up the place a bit.

If you think this sounds simple, then you’re half right. Once you get the hang of the controls and know how things work, it is easy to get the customer their orders. However, your customers are basically Karens who will nitpick every last thing you do wrong.

They’d like to speak to your manager.

If you drop anything on the ground — and I do mean ANYTHING — your customer will leave a review that you’ve either thrown it on the ground or their food had dirt or someone else’s hair in it. If you drop a plate, you better get a new one. If you drop a bun — start over. Don’t even drop the pan to cook with or they’ll mention it.

Also, don’t try to prepare in advance thinking it’ll help you game the system. The only thing you can safely do ahead of time is wash the dish you’ll need. Otherwise, they’ll complain that the food is wilted.

Additionally, you can’t leave the stove on because it will catch on fire. Even if there’s no food in the pan, you’ll get a review about fires. Likewise, it’s not advisable to leave the fridge open because I have a sneaking suspicion you’ll get docked points for that, too.

Lastly, in terms of cooking, pay attention to what your customer has ordered. They want their burgers in three levels of doneness that are represented by fire symbols. 1 fire symbol means they want it just browned whereas 3 fire symbols mean you need to pay attention to the patty as it turns three different shades of brown three times. It’s not just burgers that you may need to grill though, your customer may want cooked onions on top, so be mindful of that.

Your customer may try to trick you by telling you something they DON’T want on the burger. For instance, I got an order for a burger lightly done with fried onions, and no lettuce. If you’re just glancing, you may think they want lettuce because the icon is there, but there’s an ‘X’ in the bottom corner meant to represent that they don’t want that.

And, as far as I know, there are only two more things that you could do that would reflect poorly on your review. If you shut the gate to close the ordering process while a customer is standing there, they’ll give you a 0-star review complaining that you shut the gate in their face. And, the more likely thing that will happen, is if you restock while someone is waiting, they’ll complain that you made them wait around.

Please wait: Loading ingredients…

At the moment, restocking your kitchen is a simple button press on the door. Everything will be fully restocked, but it’s a basic loading screen and the game treats it as if you left the main room. Happily, it doesn’t cost anything to do this and there are plans to make a restocking and warehouse system. This game is in Early Access, so it’s possible things will change or be added later.

Despite the customers trying to ruin everything and being overly picky — hello, real life, what are you doing here? — Burgie’s Cozy Kitchen is actually a lot of fun. I’ve been playing in normal mode as I write this article and it’s been really cute to watch little animals walk by.

I’d say that it’s an idle game, but barely. Nothing happens between customers that gives you a boost, but it’s a fantastic little addition to your desktop if you want to play a game, but simply don’t have the time. I’ve had customers pop up as soon as 2 minutes after the last order and as late as 13 minutes after.

It’s unobtrusive on the home screen, so I’ve been able to work just fine without distraction beyond a little bear or flamingo stopping by for a burger.

If you want to try out Burgie’s Cozy Kitchen, you can get it for $4.99. If it’s not your cup of tea, you can check out our review of WYRMHALL: Brush and Banter. It’s a cozy little artifact-cleaning game. Or, you may want to take a gander at the list we did of Bullet Heaven games, a genre that you didn’t know could be cozy!