Happy's Humble Burger Farm is a horror-themed cooking simulator filled with jump scares, creepy enemies, and a disturbingly mysterious storyline. Starting as a simple fast-food worker on their way to the first day at work, players learn early on that not everything is as it seems in this first-person cooking game. With creepy mascots that invoke memories of Five Nights at Freddy's, and a layer of grime covering just about every inch of the open-world, developer Scythe Dev Team fully embraces the late-90's video game aesthetic, and it works exceptionally well.

Happy's Humble Burger Farm plays out in a series of never-ending days, as players wake up, go to work, come home, and go to bed. The actual cooking mechanics at the Burger Farm are solid, albeit simple. Customers come into the store and order one at a time, and the player needs to get the order ready by cooking meat, filling drinks, or heating up cookies and pies. As the days progress, more weird things begin to happen throughout a shift. Lights will be shut off, appliances suddenly stop working, and creatures begin to appear in the kitchen that will shock the player if they get too close.

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Exploring the world of Happy's Humble Burger Farm in between these tasks is where the real mystery in the game can be found. Each day before or after work, players are free to roam around the small open-world environment without any time restrictions. At the start, there is a coffee place, a small clinic, and a shop that players can access to buy or sell items. As the days progress, events will happen that allow the player to enter into some of the other buildings in the game. Throughout the environments are small collectible cassette tapes that contain audio logs, which help push the narrative further and explain some of the lore of the Burger Farm.

Unraveling The Mystery of Happy's Humble Burger Farm

Happys Humble Burger Farm Pause Screen Procedures

The mystery surrounding Happy's Humble Burger Farm is the game's strongest feature. There was clearly a lot of thought put into the ideas around why this world exists and it shows throughout the 4-5 hour main campaign. Players are free to explore and can push the narrative forward at their own pace, even taking on some major boss-like events in any order they choose. Certain unlocked areas will add new tools to the player's arsenal, which in turn, unlock even more areas. Whenever the free time exploration seems to come to a standstill, simply going to sleep and waking up the next day for work will help continue the story.

Utilizing the cooking mechanic as a secondary combat mechanic is quite clever, and leads to some incredibly tense boss battles. Each major event has players making burgers with more distractions and dangers getting in the way. This can start to wear on the player as it's such a repetitive task, but with its short playtime and engaging story, Happy's Humble Burger Farm never feels like a slog. The exploration in between workdays help offset the repetitiveness as well, and each little collectible or unlocked area makes the game feel fresh, despite the monotony of the job at hand.

Happys Humble Burger Farm Menu Inside

Overall, Happy's Humble Burger Farm is successful in creating a dark and mysterious world that begs to be explored. The horror elements play well into the aesthetic, and the jump scares can be quite effective. For players who just love to cook, there is an unlockable Endless Mode after beating the game which allows just that. Any fan of the horror genre will easily get their money's worth with this one.

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Happy's Humble Burger Farm is available now on Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, PC, with plans to release on Nintendo Switch in early 2022. A digital Steam copy was provided to Screen Rant for the purposes of this review.