Burger Bistro Story

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1

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Review:

Without a doubt the most prolific developer and publisher of Management Simulation games on Nintendo Switch is Kairosoft, who specializes in games with a retro-style isometric pixel art style, often with the word “Story” in the title. As of this writing, Kairosoft has released 61 games on Nintendo Switch, most of them Management Simulations.

After their earlier games, Kairosoft had established a few templates for their Simulation games that later games would largely follow. Game Dev Story established a Simulation-style game more focused on managing employee time and focus, Hot Springs Story established a Simulation style in line with Theme Park Simulators where you try to cater to guests’ tastes to maximize attendance and income, and Epic Astro Story established a Simulation style akin to games like Sim City, where you’re building out a town or settlement.

Burger Bistro Story originally released on mobile devices in 2021, then saw a port to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2022, then to PC in 2023, and to Xbox One in 2024. This game combines elements of both the Hot Springs Story and Game Dev Story formulas – you are running a burger restaurant (and later chain), and must both run individual businesses and come up with new menu item recipes to entice customers.

Burger Bistro Story doesn’t really concern itself with managing staff schedules, operating hours, or menu prices, and your ability to arrange each shop’s facilities and amenities is extremely limited. You’ll hire new employees but won’t really manage them, aside from trading them out with other staff in the “break room” when they tire out and need to be replace with someone better-rested.

Rather, this game tends to lean into trying to come up with new, enticing combinations of ingredients, and ensuring that each menu item in a location is catered to the tastes of customers in that location. While new locations default to using the same menus as other locations, you’ll be more effective if you trade out less-popular items in a location with others that appeal to that region.

It’s a different approach to this sort of formula than Kairosoft has usually done, but it’s undermined by one major flaw – this game has players using multiple kinds of resources, and it’s usually stingy with the ones you need to get anything done. There’s cash, of course, which is often needed to upgrade restaurant facilities, buy new restaurants, and research new upgrades. However, you also earn hearts that are needed to hire staff or entice passersby to try one of your menu items to entice them to become a regular. You’ll also earn what seems to be “burger points”, which are not only needed to research new recipes, but to schedule them for a spot on your menu, and these spots are time-limited unless you spend an absurd number of burger points to make it a permanent menu item.

The thing is, you get these hearts and burger points from your customers, and can’t seem to do much to get more of what you need to get a specific resource. And it’s extremely frustrated when you’re flush with cash but can’t do anything you want because the other resources are too low.

As I mentioned above, this game makes use of Kairosoft’s signature presentation style using simple retro-styled pixel art visuals, paired with chiptune music and sound effects. Apart from the forgettable synthesized music, everything about this presentation is really endearing, though by this point we’ve seen more or less the same thing in numerous other Kairosoft games.

Overall, I think Burger Bistro Story had a lot of potential to be an interesting mix of elements from Kairosoft’s different kinds of Management Simulation games, but the way it constrains players with its multiple currencies really hurts the game’s pacing and player choice, making this far more frustrating than it needs to be. I can still see players enjoying this game, but it’s not nearly as good as it could have been.

tl;dr – Burger Bistro Story is a Management Simulation where players manage a growing burger restaurant chain, guiding its growth and trying different ingredient combinations to find successful new menu items in different regions. There are some good ideas here, but the way this game slowly parcels out the currencies players need to enact goals hurts the pacing and limits choice. This is still an enjoyable game, but it definitely seems like it could have been much better.

Grade: C+

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