Burger Shop 2!!!

Now, I know, this game looks like it came out in 2009. That's because it did. However the last update was March 29 of this year. No, I can't explain it.

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I'm currently replaying Burger Shop 2 with my non-dominant hand as part of an attempt to get good at using a mouse with it. This made me remember how much I want to talk about it.

I honestly think Burger Shop 2 is a perfect game - not the perfect game, a perfect game - but I just don't know why. It's not like it truly does anything special, there's nothing I can point to and say, this is it, this is why I love Burger Shop 2. It's just something about the... entire game, the way it all fits together perfectly. It reminds me of Tetris, and DEADLINES, and For Sale, these simple games that almost miraculously just work. Burger Shop 2 is more complex than those games, granted, there's a million little fiddly bits you've got to remember about which machine you put the cup in first to make a milkshake and so on, so I probably shouldn't be making this comparison at all, but the million fiddly bits all seem to come together in just the same way to make something so profound.

Maybe I'm just imagining it. Burger Shop 2 has 128 Steam achievements and I've got all of them. It doesn't seem possible to me that I'd be able to know a game so thoroughly and not think there's something perfect about it. That'd be like learning everything there is to know about the common loon and then rating it a 4/5 bird. But it feels at least a little miraculous that the game supports you in knowing it that much, that becoming perfectly familiar with it doesn't reveal any broken edges, or anywhere the puzzle falls apart, and instead brings just how solid it is more clearly into view. See, I thought I knew everything, and then the game's developer came out of nowhere in early 2021 and dropped "Extreme Mode", which essentially asks you to replay the game and achieve unreasonably perfect performance at every step of the way. And even then, the game doesn't break, the challenge remains perfectly satisfying. It's certainly extreme, but squeezing those last few drops of what I'm able to accomplish out of the game was still highly rewarding.

It's rare that I actually go this hard on perfecting a game, getting every last drop of the experience, mastering a completely useless skill (or any skill, really). Maybe it's nostalgia? My first playthrough of Burger Shop 2 was long ago enough that the second was able to feel comfortingly familiar, but still entirely fresh. Then again, I suspect it's just a me thing: there's nothing truly special in Burger Shop 2's design, it's just that the way it is happens to sit just right with my own brain. Just the right amount of dexterity challenge, immediate decisions, and planning ahead. It wouldn't be perfect for everyone, but it happens to be a perfect game to me.