The fine folks at G5 Entertainment have a trilogy of burger-making time-management games that I thought would be fun to review and contrast.  The series starts with Stand O’Food, continues with Stand O’Food 3 (free and full) and then adds Success Story.  The reason I list them in that order is that they tend to build on the concepts of the previous title.

In the original Stand O’Food, the goal is to take items that are coming down an assembly line to build the right burger or sandwich for a customer order.  The emphasis is on the type of burger or sandwich and assembling it in the right order.  There are over 100 levels with 80 different sandwiches to create.  While the game is free to download, additional features and levels are only available in an in-app upgrade that will cost you around $5.

Stand O’Food 3, which moves to “Tinseltown”, is the sequel to the original.  Here the focus moves up from the micro-level of assembling burgers and sandwiches to also include a more extensive menu and multiple restaurants.  Now you not only have burgers and lasagnas, but also fries, different beverages, and even deserts.   In other words, you are not only assembling a full burger, but other order items as well.  So, basically, this adds extra complexity to each order.  This title has 75 different levels with 31 ingredients and 18 sauces to make up 90 different recipes spread across 25 different restaurant locations.  You can either upgrade the free app with an in-app purchase or purchase the full version outright as a separate download in order to unlock all the different levels.  This too is around $5.

The final title in the burger trilogy is Success Story.  It too is free with an in-app upgrade available for around $5.  It includes 10 different restaurants with a dozen different burger components that make up 140 different recipes (as opposed to 90 in Stand o’Food 3 and 80 in Stand O’Food) spread over 46 different levels.  There are 14 “special dishes” and the addition of 7 different mini-games and and 10 different boss characters

These titles are more than a race to accurately fill orders.  Not only are you trying to make a profit on sales, but you are also scored on customer satisfaction.  If you don’t deliver the right order in a timely matter, both can suffer.  And if you don’t get enough money or have a high enough customer satisfaction, then your ability to upgrade your equipment and advance in the game suffers.

These titles have more of a fast-paced arcade quality to them than the G5 Virtual City titles (which I prefer).  If Virtual City is too slow-paced for you and you enjoy the fast-paced stress of time pressure, then you will really enjoy these titles.  All three are ranked heavily with five stars in the market and all three have an average rating of 4.4 stars.  And, if working fast food is too masculine for you, there is a more female-friendly set of games that has a very similar core game play.  The G5 trilogy of Supermarket Mania, Supermarket Mania 2, and Supermarket Management has a supermarket theme where you are stocking shelves instead of filling orders, but have a combined 180 levels of additional game play to either replace or add to the 200+ levels in the cooking-based trilogy.  And, if you don’t have an Android, don’t be alarmed.  Most, if not all, of these titles are available for the iPhone, the iPad, the PC, and the Mac.  You can even play a couple of these titles on the PSP.  And, since these games are free to download and try, there isn’t much excuse not to take them out for a spin.  If you like time-management games, it would be hard to find any of better quality than these G5 titles.