In a world of Taco Bells and Chipotles, what’s another dingy hotdog restaurant with questionable meat and a penchant for sending you to the toilet for days on end? Meat Grinder: Hotdog Simulator enters the burgeoning simulator market with tasty pork dogs and just a whiff of rotten, decaying meat. Unlike Tesco’s, it’s not a fan of horse meat, but that’s not to deter you from using human flesh instead.

That’s right, developer Panic Panda asks the question of what would happen if inflation got so bad a desperate fast food chain owner decided to dig up corpses and serve them ground up with mustard? If you’ve ever pondered such a quandary, this might be the perfect simulator game for you.

Meat The Locals

Meat Grinder: Hotdog Simulator opens with our protagonist alone on a bus. Accosted by a definitely-not-at-all-creepy old man, we learn he’s moved to a new sleepy town, to open – you guessed it – a hotdog joint. There’s murmurings of a less than stellar past for our main character, and that’s about your lot. It’s not a terrible jumping off point by any means, but the lack of any real development I found to be a shame.

As a PSX styled game, there’s no voiced dialogue, just audio rumblings when characters speak. It works for the aesthetic and atmosphere, to the game’s credit. However, I felt the narrative payoff was, unfortunately, quite awful. Upon completing enough in-game days and (I’m assuming) reaching a certain restaurant milestone, you just wake up, the game smashes you over the head with a miniature dump of exposition and then immediately cuts to credits.

There’s abrupt, and then there’s opening a door to walk straight off a cliff Looney Tunes style abrupt. Meat Grinder: Hotdog Simulator is far closer to the latter. It’s paper thin use of a “dark past” is ridiculously poor as well, but in some ways, kind of endearing. Let’s just leave it with the thought that they made a token effort at a narrative, albeit a very flawed one.

Grinding Them Down

I might be the only person on planet earth who complains about narrative in a game called Meat Grinder: Hotdog Simulator, but there we are. Thankfully, there’s a pretty fun loop to be found within the gameplay itself. Opening the doors of your hotdog palace, you’re met with tables, counters, a rather large freezer and… a big ol’ dump in the toilet? Some real Duke Nukem Forever energy there. Anyway, just pop that in the bin and we’ll carry on.

During the day, you’ll grind, fry and bun sausages, slap on sauces, dish out drinks and even serve up fries eventually. Customers all have their preferences, with their orders getting more complicated as the in-game days tick by. They also complain, a lot, if you haven’t fixed up the drinks and fries stations. Each station involves multiple steps, which becomes a stressful marathon when you have a huge queue and burn your fries.

These kinds of loops are, generally, always pretty fun, and I found that to be no different here. There’s enough steps involved to keep things involved without devolving into mundane micromanagement. I also liked having to constantly manage inventory, order new replenishments and keep the meat coming. Does the bun go a little soggy too soon? Probably, but for about 3 hours or so, there’s enough meat on these rolls to be satisfied.

That’s A Meat Trick

Some aspects of the game are finicky, like interacting with the sauce station when there’s multiple bottles, or cutting up… “inventory”… with your butcher’s knife, which can be annoying when in full flow. Additionally, the cleaning aspect of the game is a literal chore, requiring you to hold a button down to sweep up dirt and manually throw dozens of pieces of trash away every day. I would say this is nitpicking, but there’s not a lot else to the game to discuss, really.

Money you acquire through sales allow you to order more inventory, and purchase two repair kits to introduce the drinks and fries stations. You can also buy a chainsaw too, for… reasons. It’s not a huge amount of progression, but there is something of a gradient curve, at least. Once your working day is over, you catch some Z’s to awake in the night. This is when you can acquire your hotdog sustenance through more illicit means.

Grab your shovel, head over to the cemetery and dig yourself up some ripe decaying sacks to grind into hotdogs. Video games are fun. Aside from avoiding some very basic Police AI, there’s not a lot to this, but cutting up bodies is suitably uncomfortable. While it doesn’t add much to the gameplay, it does sell more of the grungy, gritty atmosphere well. You can even unlock a shortcut to skip the Police altogether, which is neat.

A Rotten Simulator?

Aside from shock value of carving up dead bodies, Meat Grinder: Hotdog Simulator is an alright time. Sure, you can go around town plucking up random ingredients to make “secret sauces”, but by that stage, I’d had more than enough of my fill. The graphical style was a wise choice, opting for a retro, PS1 inspired look, evoking old horror vibes. I wish the town itself had a little bit more interactivity or just anything else going on, though.

It took me about two and a half hours to roll credits, and though the ending felt like a door being slammed in my face, I think the runtime feels about right. If you’re into more arthouse entertainment, Meat Grinder: Hotdog Simulator fills some of that space. There are more impactful shock value games out there, without a doubt, and it’s a serviceable simulator game with a decent loop, but little more to keep you hooked.

Meat Grinder: Hotdog Simulator is available from August 11th on PC (review platform).

Developer: Panic Panda
Publisher: Ultimate Games S.A. Ultimate Publishing.

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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