Parents' Guide to Happy's Humble Burger Farm

What do you get when you mix the frantic fast-food assembly line gameplay of Overcooked! with the creepy restaurant horror vibe of Five Nights at Freddy's? The answer would be something along the lines of Happy's Humble Burger Farm. Right from the start, there's a lot of disturbing elements to the game. The opening cutscene sets up a twisted scenario all on its own, but it's once the player takes control that things really start to feel like you're trapped in a fast-food fever dream. It's eerie enough to be stuck in a cycle of forced servitude, flipping burgers and dropping fries for masses of mindless drones while under the all-seeing eye of a mysterious supervisor. But when doors start opening and lights start flickering, plastic statues move on their own, and freaky human-like things appear suddenly before exploding into a noxious mist, that's when things become true nightmare fuel.

As surreal as the game may be, its presentation makes the experience even more jarring, but for all the wrong reasons. The game looks like it's been plucked from the heyday of the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 era. Stiff animations and flat textures on awkward polygonal models don't exactly push the boundaries of realism and immersion. The controls are equally clunky, basically forcing players to throw items around while hoping for the best. These combine makes the daily grind of shift work at the restaurant bad enough, but it makes interacting with the rest of the environments almost painful. And yet despite this, there's still an odd sort of appeal to it, much like watching a schlocky B-movie. It's something you know from the start isn't going to be great, but it's also something you can't help watching to see just how bad its going to get.