Order Up With Speed in Burger ASAP!

Speed is key, as you race to complete orders and use your ingredient cards to replicate burgers exactly. Are you sure you got that bacon in the right place? Because if you announce you’re done too early, you could be out of the round.

Published by Blue Orange Games, Burger ASAP! is a speed card game for 2-5 players with a 15-minute game time.

Gameplay

Each player takes seven double-sided ingredient cards. Each side has two ingredients (one on the top half and one on the bottom half of the card). The two sides are not the same and will show different ingredients. The order deck is placed in the center of the table.

One player draws the top order card and reveals it. This will show 1-3 burgers. Players act simultaneously, racing to use their ingredients to build the burgers shown on the order card. There are a couple of rules to follow: first, you must use all your ingredient cards. You can overlap cards, but at least one half of each card must be visible, except for the double meat cards, which cannot be covered at all.

Once you think you have completed a burger, you shout ‘burger!’ and slap the order card. All other players then stop, and your burger is checked. If your burgers do not exactly match those on the order card, you are out of the round and the other players continue to try to replicate the order card. If you are correct, you take the order card and add it to your score pile. Players then begin a new round.

Each order card has 1-3 stars shown on it. The first player to win seven stars wins the game.

Review

Burger ASAP! is an excellent speed game. You think it will be easy, with only seven ingredient cards, to create each burger, but the fact that they are double-sided makes it quite tricky. You might have the right ingredients laid out for one burger and then realize you need the back side of one of the cards you’ve already used, so you need to find those same ingredients on different cards.

There is a certain logical approach to the burger making, and the challenge is often figuring out where to start with a burger. For example, knowing that those double meat cards cannot be covered can sometimes give you a starting point, or figuring out based on which ingredients are on the reverse side of certain other ingredients can help you figure out which one to play. However, you’re doing all this deduction and logic while racing other players. This makes it easy to make mistakes, especially when certain ingredients are close together on an order.

The box is cleverly designed to look like a take-out burger box, and aesthetically when you first open it, it’s pretty neat, but it’s not very sturdy and does look like it will easily be smashed or broken. It’s also a box that the cards can easily fall out of if you don’t close it just right. It's a fun idea for a store shelf, but not the best execution in terms of practicality. Besides that, the components are nice, with the artwork being colorful and bright, and we liked the little smiley faces on the hamburger buns.

Burger ASAP! plays quickly and is a good fit for families, appealing to a wide age range. It blends puzzle, logic, and speed, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s surprisingly challenging, and the result is a solid, good time.

Pros: Clever blend of logic and speed, short playtime, artwork on the ingredients

Cons: The box is not very sturdy

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.