Idle Burger Empire Tycoon Review

I’ll Have a New Tycoon Simulator Game, Hold the Pickles

 Developer Codigames seems to be playing their own sort of tycoon game to see how many of these niche empire builder games one company can make. The long list of such time sink games like: Supermarket Tycoon, Theme Park Tycoon, and Prison Empire Tycoon now includes Idle Burger Empire Tycoon. In this game you start a burger franchise and upgrade it to increase profitability so you can upgrade it more and so on until the eventual heat death of the universe.

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before

You can most likely guess this game’s schtick just by looking at the screenshots. Increase the efficiency and profits of your restaurant by waiting to build up enough cash to purchase an upgrade. Now that it’s purchased, wait for a countdown until said upgrade will be implemented. Repeat indefinitely. Not exactly reinventing the wheel, but for players of these types of games it doesn’t need to be as long as the gameplay is satisfying. So how is the gameplay?

Hurry Up and Wait…

Some would argue that an intuitive menu system is pretty important to a game about navigating menus. Unfortunately in Idle Burger Empire Tycoon trying to find the specific thing you want to upgrade can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. To hire a new stocker, for example, you have to upgrade your bread shelf through the research menu. These kinds of choices hinder the playability of a game arguably designed to be as easy to play as possible to hook players in. If the gameplay can’t hook you right away, there’s a good chance you’ll give up on the game because of how long it takes to get going.

 Your employees work incredibly slowly at the start of the game. You will almost always be out of important items like patties and cheese due to limited inventory space. Your Restaurant only has one table but your parking lot is always packed. This is surprising though, as your customers have to pay you for parking. This means a lot of time spent staring at employees arguing about the lack of buns in a hamburger restaurant. My favorite instance of time theft was waiting 20 minutes to “research” how to put cheese on a burger.

How’s the Sizzle? 

The game’s music provides a nice relaxing loop. Most people play mobile games with the sound off or listen to their own music, though. Dialogue from Lucy, your typical tutorial expository character, will feature the occasional typo. This can be explained by Codigames being a Spanish speaking company. It won’t matter to most players, however, as the important information is easy to understand. Visually the game is on par with most other games in the genre. Cute colorful graphics and a blocky art style work just fine for what this is: a game you’ll play while waiting at the dentist or sitting on the bus.

A lot of us enjoy playing these kinds of games when trying to pass the time, but there are better games at distracting you when you’re bored. There is basically nothing to do while waiting for upgrades and ultimately if you downloaded this game it’s because you’re looking for something to alleviate boredom. Unfortunately, Idle Burger Empire Tycoon will only create more of it.