Brunch Panic (Nintendo 3DS) Review

While the game could easily throw the player right into the action, Brunch Panic goes the extra mile and adds about a dozen of cute, little cut-scenes with Japanese voice acting that show the experiences of Bonnie, a young and talented cook that loves to travel. Her grandfather allows her to combine the two interests by giving her a special birthday present, a brunch truck that she can use to travel the lands while preparing food for hungry customers.

The game is split into 50 levels and each world contains 10 of them. Each stage consists of a day of work and the goal is to earn a certain amount of money before the shop closes. Earning more than the minimum required amount to progress through the game nets the player up to three stars per level, which are used to unlock achievements in the form of customisation options for Bonnie's brunch truck. This is done not only by serving as many customers as possible but also doing it quickly to keep them happy and earn higher tips.

At the start Bonnie only has doughnuts, croissants, milk and coffee to sell. New products and ingredients are slowly introduced and the game does a good job at creating a natural difficulty progression without overwhelming the player with options. That is not to say that later levels aren't capable of just that, though, as they will require plenty of dexterity and good multi-tasking skills to meet the demands of all the customers. Speaking of customers, there are a variety of different ones that are regularly introduced and aren't mere palette swaps as they actually have different characteristics to mix up the gameplay a bit. For example, the scientists will regularly think about mathematical equations and not of their order, while the food critics have very low patience and will positively or negatively affect others depending on how quickly they are served their food.

Every fifth stage also has a slight twist to it, as there are an infinite amount of customers to serve before the time runs out with greatly sped up cooking tools to match the challenge. This keeps things fun and interesting for a while but there's only so much these additions can do to alleviate the repetitive nature of the gameplay. Fortunately, the game isn't very long and designed to be enjoyed in short bursts, so it never becomes a big problem.