Brunch Panic (3DS)
On a surface level, Brunch Panic looks like an inviting kids game. Bright colors, cute characters, and silly comedy cutscenes between the game worlds make this cooking game feel like it’s angling for a young audience, and when you’re starting off by just putting honey and whipped cream on bagels and croissants, it feels like it is heading that direction. However, when you begin to get more and more food for your brunch-focused food truck, soon you’re barely able to hang on as you’re toasting sandwiches, cooking eggs and ham, and dealing with plenty of antsy customers who aren’t eager to wait around for it all to be ready. Brunch Panic does start to live up to its name some as it begins to get rather intense but thankfully also thrilling, the play demanding but manageable as you start to learn the ins and outs of running your food truck.
Bonnie begins her food truck adventure with the dream of serving food in Paris, but mostly she seems happy to travel where ever anyone needs a meal. There are some obvious text translation issues at parts but mostly in terms of grammar, all the voiced dialogue Japanese but it’s a breezy story that mostly just pops up to show a small vignette of the food truck life every now and then. Starting out you’ll have very little food variety and very understanding customers, the player using the touch screen to assemble food and then drag it to the person who ordered it. Oddly enough you can make food out of order, meaning you can put honey on the plate before you add the bagel and it somehow assembles into a tidy meal. It’s certainly not going to be an aspect you complain about once things pick up in speed and complexity, and if you do mess up an order the customer won’t accept it so you’ll have to toss it out and restart it which might not always be possible before their patience runs thin and they walk off. Each level is rated on a three star scale based on how many customers you served among those who show up and the speed with which you serve them is important to getting a full set of three stars. In fact, if you’re fast enough you can sometimes offset outright displeased customers since even if they depart in a huff, they won’t diminish your score, just fail to add to it.
Over the course of the game’s 50 levels you’ll gradually expand the offerings of your food truck, much of the challenge just coming from the broader range of options that require more adept juggling of priorities. Once things like waffles and sandwiches are added to the menu you’ll need to make sure to cook food in the downtime, but since bread comes in many varieties and some grills are multipurpose like the one used for both eggs and ham you also need to make sure not to clog up these work stations in case a customer comes in demanding an option you didn’t have prepared. Luckily nothing burns after it is prepared, but items do cook in the order they’re added and this does become incredibly relevant in later levels because even though only four customers can approach the food truck and order at a time, the swiftness with which they’re replaced at times can start to really tax you if you just slap food on the grills willy-nilly. There is an appreciable rise in difficulty that means you’re properly trained up to be capable of handling these heavier work loads, and the game even adds in a gumball machine that can help ease some of the pressure as you can drag the candy to any customers growing irate so that they’re willing to wait a bit longer for their food. To balance that out even getting the candy out of the machine takes time though, adding to another task to balance while you try to stay efficient despite how hectic things can get.
This satisfying climb in manageable variety makes getting a handle on the increasing demands a suitable challenge and one that keeps you involved and aware, the player soon able to notice specifics patterns within a stage and develop a small strategy to overcome its unique demands. Certain levels might emphasize a food type more often and with the customers coming in different archetypes you can soon learn that specific ones will have a favorite meal type for a level. The type of customer actually has a major impact on a level’s flow too, certain characters having specific traits or effects. Some are as simple as a grandma character being slow to approach the counter so you can have some time to prepare food as she shimmies along, but others like the businessman are more impatient and will need their order quickly. More interesting are ones that can actually impact other customers such as the celebrity who makes everyone more patient when she appears, the food critic who will perk everyone up if you serve him his meal quickly enough to please him, and the homeless man whose body odor conversely makes people more eager to leave and less patient while he’s around. The homeless man is a case where the identifying of patterns can help you greatly as getting him his meal quickly is key to keeping everyone happy and since all homeless men in a level want the same order you can have all the ingredients ready so you can quickly send it out once he’s actually put in his order.
Balancing your actual food assembly and prep work based on the customer type makes up the exciting core of Brunch Panic and since levels are only a few minutes long it’s not too hard to pop back in and retry a stage if you fell short of the three star mark. The game does include one other form of play though, with every fifth stage serving as a rush stage where everyone’s in line and immediately makes their order after the person in front of them gets their food. They won’t get impatient in this level and all your grills prepare food almost instantly, the challenge instead being to serve as many people as possible within a tight time limit. The considerations in this stage do shrink down as the customer type becomes less important as their gimmicks are stripped away, but at the same time these levels are good for ensuring you’re swift enough to handle the later stages where you will have more concerns on your plate.
To try and give itself a bit more longevity, Brunch Panic also has unlockables to angle for. Performing certain actions or doing well enough on specific stages will unlock new decorations and color schemes for your food truck, although unfortunately these only show on the menus rather than during the actual food service portions. Admittedly a lot of the screen real estate ends up occupied with important items and information, the bottom screen eventually packed with food and the customers on the top screen having important info to convey like the thought bubbles with their orders and hearts representing their waning patience (although exaggerated facial expressions make that more readable at a glance thankfully). It’s hard to propose unlockables that wouldn’t disrupt the careful pacing and important visual details needed for the game’s stages to pack a punch but remain manageable, but since cuteness for the sake of it is part of the game’s design it’s not too bad to have options like changing the food truck’s look a bit.
THE VERDICT: Brunch Panic’s bright and sweet exterior isn’t a facade, but there is definitely a more challenging cooking game underneath its cute face than you might imagine. The spread of food grows in complexity just enough to remain manageable at a lightning pace while the customer variety asks you to consider things like who to prioritize while also giving you clues on how to handle that same customer type later in the level. The unlockables may not be the most impressive rewards, but the actual progression in difficulty turns Brunch Panic into an intense challenge that it trains you for well.
And so, I give Brunch Panic for Nintendo 3DS…
A GOOD rating. While it would be interesting to see Brunch Panic keep going after its set of 50 levels, introducing more customer types and food considerations, it manages to wrap up the experience before it grows too large to manage and it finds its footing quickly enough that it doesn’t feel like that time was wasted. Shooting for three stars in a stage gives you reason to repeat them because the rating never feels absolutely out of reach, aspects like being able to offset some dissatisfied customers by serving others more speedily a smart way to avoid the player feeling like a level is doomed if things briefly go awry. The customer types add a lot to the flow of a stage perhaps doing more for the enjoyability of the game than the actual food you’re preparing, the player needing to identify trends and know how to work around specific customer gimmicks to keep things moving at a preferred pace. The food preparation is a little simple but it needs to be in order to handle the demands placed on it, but it also has things like the limited grill space to keep you in check while being able to assemble parts of a meal in any order eases things up so you can even have every part of a sandwich but the bread waiting as it toasts. You don’t need to be perfect but you need to think about what you’re preparing and who you’re serving, giving Brunch Panic’s levels more than the skill challenge of being able to quickly tap all the ingredients to assemble them in time. However the rush levels also ensure you have that speed to keep up with that aspect of the game, Brunch Panic having a good sense for how it should balance its elements to make it approachable despite its gradual rise in difficulty.
When I booted up Brunch Panic I expected something similar to StirFry Stunts – We Bare Bears, but that game shows how a game can be hurt by upgrades to your abilities while Brunch Panic keeps its variables in check so the stages provide the exact level of challenge the designers desire. Even if you’re quick to tap everything you want to serve there are still considerations like what to have cooking and how to handle specific customer types, Brunch Panic iterating well within its design space before it sends you off with a smile.