Burger Cooking Game Tips: Read the Grill Light

The first burger cooking game tip is to watch the grill light instead of counting: in Grillbell the light turned green between 2.5 and 4.7 seconds after the patty landed, and red, burnt, between 6.5 and 9.4 seconds. The exact times moved from try to try, but the light always told the truth.

How Grillbell works

Grillbell is a burger counter in a music bar. Customers line up, up to four at a time, each with a bubble that shows the burger, its toppings and a drink or a coffee. You drag a raw patty onto the grill, build the burger on the serving tray from the buns and toppings in the trays, add the right drink and hand it over. The grill has a small light on its front, and burnt patties go in the bin. Free play runs against a money goal with a clock; career mode opens level by level.

What we measured

We focused on the grill, because every order depends on it. In a test browser we dragged a raw patty onto the grill and took cropped screenshots of the grill and its light, three separate tries: once every two seconds, and twice as fast as the browser allowed, roughly every half second to a second. For each picture we noted whether the patty was raw with the light off, cooked with a green light or burnt with a red light. We also left the counter alone to see how quickly customers piled up. These are timing tests by a script, not full shifts played by a person.

Three tries in one slow test browser, where the game did not always run at an even speed, so the seconds are a guide rather than exact. The order of the light, off, then green, then red, was the same every time.

A green window of a few seconds

Across the three tries the patty was never ready before 2.5 seconds and never still green after 8.2 seconds. The safe window was a few seconds wide, longest in try B, where the patty stayed green from 3.3 to 8.2 seconds. Since the times shifted between tries, the light is the better clock: pull the patty as soon as it is green and you are never late.

Drag, do not click

Our first attempt clicked the raw patty and nothing happened. Dragging it from the tray onto the grill started the cooking. We moved the burnt patty to the bin the same way, with a drag.

The counter fills fast

When we served nobody, four customers were standing at the counter with their order bubbles after 47 seconds. A patty takes a few seconds on the grill, so having one cooking while you build the previous burger keeps the line moving.

4 tips that follow from the numbers

• Green means go. The patty was ready between 2.5 and 4.7 seconds; take it off then.
• Red means bin. It burnt between 6.5 and 9.4 seconds; drag it to the bin and start again.
• Keep the grill busy. Start the next patty while you stack the current burger.
• Drag the patty. A click did not move it in our test.

Where to try it

Try it yourself in Grillbell. For more counter service, Fizzslide is a soda bar game, and Sconeloop is a cosy cafe merge game.