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In Stand O’ Food you have two modes: Meal Quest and Lunch Rush. Meal Quest takes you from restaurant to restaurant serving customers and trying to make a profit. Lunch Rush is a continuous line of customers where your only break is to buy some upgrades. Upgrades allow you to buy various items for your restaurant such as extra plates, condiments, coffee maker, jukebox, etc. These items help you while you’re working; certain upgrades help keep the customers more patient therefore buying you some time to put together their meal. Buying condiments gives your burgers that extra something which could yield a bigger tip. Although it really doesn’t cost much for a burger anyway, and getting an extra few cents doesn’t really seem worth it.

There is a short tutorial that guides you through the basic steps of making a burger. The ingredients come out on multiple conveyer belts and in no particular order. You’ll need to think ahead to see which patty you want to get to, especially if there is a stack of burger tops in front of it. This is when buying extra plates as an upgrade comes in handy. Extra plates are helpful because they let you set aside ingredients in case you are having issues getting the right ingredient on the conveyer belt. You can always grab the ingredients that you set aside when you need them. Clicking on the burger components picks them up, right clicking puts them back. There is only one way to stack it and that’s from the bottom up. Usually you’ll have a long line of customers, so you don’t necessarily have to serve the first customer first. This is nice because sometimes you need to get certain ingredients out of the way.

The difficulty starts to increase when you discover more complicated sandwiches. There are over 80 different sandwiches throughout the game. When a new sandwich comes up, a menu also pops up interrupting your game. This gets in the way more than anything, but there is the option to turn it off. Stand O’ Food can go on for hours since there are a lot of restaurant locations to go through. Once I started losing customers, I noticed this crane will suddenly appear. I’m not quite sure what this does, or what it means when a suitcase with a dollar sign appears. Other things that aren’t explained throughout the game are the stars on top of the restaurants. You would assume that they mean difficulty, but you are whisked to each restaurant in no apparent order.

When I zoomed out of the map, I realized just how long this game can take. With the ability to buy upgrades, that keeps you motivated to at least continue. After each level there is a sheet that tells you how much profit you’re making, and usually it’s not much. It takes a few levels to save up and buy nicer items such as the fan or a digital jukebox. Burger building does get tiresome and I get a little stressed out when my customers are getting upset and ready to walk out. The graphics are really basic, with no real animations except people forming a long line. The colors make it look like a Weinerschnitzel, with bright red and orange dйcor. After awhile it does seem a little too orange, and the environment never changes so you’re stuck staring at the same screen except at different ingredients.

In the main menu you can always check out the list of sandwiches that you have discovered, along with a Hall of Fame to check high scores. I suppose there are only so many ways to make a hamburger, but it would have been nice to have a little variation, such as a moving conveyer belt where you can catch the ingredients instead of having to click through for them. It just gets a little tiring to have to click all the time, and the music never changes so it starts to feel like actual work.

Stand O’ Food can be downloaded for free if you want to test out the game. There are a ton of quick and easy casual games out there. This one might not be the most creative, but it sure does pass the time.