It’s a dark, rainy night, and the first at my new job running a small food kiosk. I look around the kitchen, preparing ingredients for any hungry customers looking for a late-night snack. My boss calls and gives me a brief breakdown of how to run the place. Cook ’em up and serve the customers – cool, I got this. He thanks me for filling in for the last guy who mysteriously vanished and tells me to disregard any manic scribbles he may have left behind. Whatever, I’m just here for a quick buck. Kiosk may technically be a cooking simulator, but really, that’s just a means to tell its creepy story.

Kiosk begins relatively tame, much like most horror games, but it doesn’t take long for the tension to start building. You’ll start the first night by preparing basic meals, like cheeseburgers and hotdogs, and lobbing them at your satisfied customers. Most of your clients are regular, hungry folks looking for munchies. But it’s a late-night gig, so there’s bound to be a few oddballs here and there. A drunk looking to slam a few more brewskis, a clown who just wants to make people laugh, a jerk who thinks it’s cool to dine and dash.

It’s all pretty typical, that is, until things start getting a little weird. A breaker shorting out is one thing, but when it starts happening multiple times, you start to wonder if someone’s messing with you. Or worse… watching you.

‘kiosk’ lets me live out my dreams of throwing glizzies and taters at clowns

Kiosk‘s physics-based approach toward handling food and opening packages is effective and comical. To open a pack of sausages, you place it on a table, pick up your knife, and quite literally chunk it towards the product. This often creates an explosion of glizzies around the kitchen, but it only takes a moment to clean up the mess. Slicing up produce is similar but, thankfully, less hectic.

This comes in handy when you’re rushing to get orders out as fast as possible. Sometimes, I’ll stand near the fridge, chunking eggs and raw patties across the room and onto the flat griddle. Kiosk has no timers to adhere to, so the ‘cooking simulator’ aspect is actually pretty chill. Despite that, I’ve been hungry and outside a food truck, so I’m multitasking my ass off for a raise and a good Yelp rating.

While you’ll certainly be cooking in Kiosk, it’s the bite-sized story that really stresses you out. Totaling about 75 minutes of playtime, I definitely fell victim to a few of its jump scares. It’s not the most impactful plot, but a game where you’re frying up nuggies and squirting ketchup on the walls isn’t really trying to be. If you’ve got an appetite for a creepy evening, clock in and flip some patties.

Kiosk is available now on Steam.