iPhone App: Gourmania

October 27th, 2009

= 3 stars

Serve up food for hungry customers and run a restaurant in this time management plus visual hide-and-seek game.

The Good

Solid and challenging game play: fill customers’ orders as quickly as possible, by tapping ingredients hidden on the screen. The needed ingredients are listed on each order ticket in a recipe of sorts. The mix of time management and hide-and-seek is pretty compelling, and I nearly missed my train stop while progressing through several levels.
Bonus levels where you drop ingredients into a scrolling array of holes based on shape.
Lots of variety in terms of food ingredients and different restaurants (coffee cafe, pizza joint, sushi bar) of increasing difficulty.

The Bad

The scenario plays out with a disturbing lack of logic. The kitchen you’re presented with is a complete mess, with food piled up all over the place and in ridiculous locations – no self-respecting chef would run a kitchen this way, or after a few days of trying to cook in this mess, would get a clue and clean things up. The logic also fails in the recipes, where you’re making hot dogs with cucumber and parsley, and making ketchup, mayonnaise, and parsley pizzas (not kidding).
Some strange glitches, the graphics are an odd mix of illustration and photographic elements, and you can tap and drag on the entire background, revealing the black screen behind.

Conclusion

If you can get beyond the nonsense scenario – and the paranoid feeling that Gordon Ramsay will appear at any moment to scream at you – Gourmania is a strange sort of fun.

iTunes App Store Link: