Happy Humble Burger Farm Review on Xbox

Happy's Humble Burger Farm is best described as a retro-styled first person horror game set in a burger venue. All reviews (unless stated otherwise) are based on the Developer/Publisher providing myself with a review code, which i am grateful for, but does not influence my outcome.

The premise is that you serve customers and maintain the Happy's Humble Burger Farm restaurant alone on the overnight. But be careful; things fall apart if you mess up! After work, head home and keep your eyes open for a way to escape the Barnyard Buds and their fast food fever-dream.

The game boasts a state of the art restaurant management simulation! Allowing you to cook food, fill drinks, and serve customers! Restaurant upgrades, unique Story, an unlockable endless mode, It also has about 2 hours of Talk Radio and 60+ television programs to zone out to, featuring epic cameos! Plus you can also upgrade your apartment with top of the range furniture, like a Interactive jukebox with boast 9 brand new albums recorded exclusively for the game.

Gameplay

The gameplay starts with you waking up at your apartment and being told to start you job as the new server at a burger venue. You leave your apartment and make your way thought he town to the venue, to start your shift. Here you will serve customers as they come into the store and order, one at a time, quickly and efficiently till your shift ends.

The cooking aspect of the game isn’t a button press and you will be expected to do everything in a bid to get the order ready and within the allotted time. This will entail cooking meat, filling drinks, or heating up cookies and pies. Its soon can get abit hectic ensuring that you have everything cooking or ready to be moved from the kitchen to the customer.  Prepping is wise in every shift but even so, it can get abit tight, so to combat this, you can upgrade the burger venue to help give you more time or easier tasks.

Regardless, careful studying of the menu is essential to understand how to make each different burger as all have different elements which will need to be done correctly. And that’s even before you have to meet the needs of the customer. For instance a customer may not want onion on their burger and if you accidently do, you will have to start over, which will get you an penalty against your name. Get 3 penalties and well, I won’t spoil it, but lets just say things will get very dark for you! And this is where the horror aspect starts to creep in and soon take over.

As your days progress, weird things also begin to happen throughout your shifts. Lights will turn off, appliances suddenly stop working, and strange creatures begin to appear in the kitchen, that will shock the player, if they get too close. It soon becomes very apparent that things here are not what they seem, though spending anytime with you work colleague Tom, should easily give you that hint! Because you can easily get too focussed on your work, these dark elements often caught me off guard and provide me with the perfect jump scare or tense moment as you rush to finish an order.

Whilst the serving part is one of the games most fun features, its actually the free roam elements between these tasks that really opens up the mystery of the game. Each day before or after work, you are free to roam around the small open-world environment without any time restrictions. In the beginning, there is a coffee shop, a small clinic, and a all purpose shop that players can buy or sell items in. These items give you more energy/health and can be use in conjunction with your job to be more efficient. But there are also other items for sale that you won’t fully understand their relevance, until other areas of the game open up to you.

 As the days progress, certain events will happen that allow the player to enter into some of the other buildings in the game. Certain unlocked areas will then add new tools to the player's arsenal, which in turn, unlock even more areas. And this is where the other items on sale take centre stage as you will need to purchase these in a bid to create said items with the use of blueprints, which then allow you to explore more areas.

But of course to do that, you need to work a shift in a bid to earn money. It’s a clever but well thought out circular motion, that ensures you are always kept occupied, but at the same time, have a goal for you to achieve.

As you explore at your leisure, you often will push the narrative forward at your own pace, which will mean taking on some major boss-like events. Speaking of the boss events, these utilize the cooking mechanic as a secondary combat mechanic, which is very clever, and can lead to some incredibly tense but fun boss battles. 

Each major event has players making burgers with more distractions and dangers getting in the way, but by doing so it also allows the player a basic understanding in how to defeat said boss. Once a boss has been defeated you are often rewarded with a blueprint allowing you to gain access to other hidden areas.

 Whenever exploration gets too boring or you are hindered in some way in progressing, simply going to sleep and waking up the next day for work will help continue to push the story forward. Now the game isn’t just about burgers and throughout the environments there are small collectible cassette tapes that contain audio logs, which will help you understand and explain some of the lore of the Burger Farm franchise. 

Also being that this is a player choice orientated game, you can do other stuff than explore and defeat bosses. The game also allows you to upgrade your apartment, should you feel its getting abit plain. Saving cash to but the latest tv soon became one such task for myself, even though there was no real need to do so.

The control system is abit complex but thankfully the tutorial does help that out in some form, and after afew shifts, you will be well on your way to be being a perfect burger flipper. One thing I will say is that this is a game with little to no hand holding and its very much better because of it. Making your own way through this game is what’s going to sit in your memory for a long time to come.

Graphics

The games retro style may not be everyone’s liking, but for me it hit the nail on the head perfectly. Its weird ps1 style and dull colour scheme, combined with its blocky nature, complements the theme and story. Faceless characters and repetitive imagery, helps push that you have a mundane existence which lacks an interesting edge and that you are only here to serve and comply. But also this gloomy world invites you to explore the areas whilst filling you with dread as you enter any new area.

The cemetery really ramped up my stress as I wondered around it, and this is partly due to its heavy visual style. Not being able to see everything crisp and clear pushes you to look closer, where a precise visual will help ward you off entering anywhere, if it looks too dangerous. 

Visually, making the bosses twisted versions of the franchises mascots is perfect, and you can tell they really had some fun making this beasts scary. Each boss and style of battle was worked perfectly around each character and really help sell this dark bleak dystopian setting.

Sound

The game does have voiced characters and they do a superb job selling the oppressive regime to you. This along with the creepy audio really pushes the games horror aspect above and beyond. The musical score works well to amplify the sense of atmosphere, with creepy motifs and more unsettling tunes that peak at moments to keep you on edge. 

Every character makes bizarre noises that are very uncomfortable to listen to. Combine this with restaurant own buzzes and creeks, the ghostly beings screams, crawl, and shuffling around, and it all soon gets pretty horrific. The best way to hear all these subtle elements is through a good gaming headset, but a good soundbar is equally impressive.

Verdict 
This leads me onto the rating of the game:-
Now I rate games in order of, avoid, on sale, great purchase and must own. My rating for Happy's Humble Burger Farm is a "Great Purchase".

This is a game that I think will once you get into it, will draw you in to the very dark story and it’s enjoyable burger making, pretty quickly. It went above any expectations I had, and was a joy to play with its innovative style and retro look.

The game is currently priced on Xbox at £16.74 or approx $20, and depending on skill and patience would give you about 6+ hours worth of gameplay. Add in the different items to buy, collectibles and an endless mode to unlock, and you could easily double the total number of hours.

You can buy it here

This game offers a unique and genuinely nightmare-inducing, but fun experience. Its own take on the horror element using a fast food outlet works surprisingly well, and whilst there are other horror games similar to this premise, it does more than enough to stand proudly on its own merits. If your into burgers and horror, this is perfect for you!