Burger Bois | Mischief Makers Studio

We're a group of friends from Aotearoa making games that tingle the brain and tickle the weenus - like Burger Bois! 🍔

[mischiefmakers-studio]

Dev Update #10: Burger Bois Demo out now on Steam!

Hey flavor freaks!

Did you see today’s big news? 👀

Today, as part of the Women-Led Games Showcase, we dropped our first ever demo for FREE on Steam!

Ready to give it a go? Try the Burger Bois first look now: Click here

Curious what’s hidden between the buns? 👀 Here’s what you can expect (and what not to expect) in the Burger Bois demo!

What to expect in the Burger Bois demo:

Enjoy up to 60 minutes of free-form creative gameplay! 🎮

Explore the wacky hijinks of Patty and Fry at our first two locations: The Truck Stop and Make-Out Point. 📍

Collect 34 out of 100+ planned ingredients. 🍔

Taste the core flavors of burger bois: Sell burgers, respond to reviews, post nonsense on social media and test out the BURGO bingo-card style progression system. 😉

Meet just a few of our planned ‘Special Customers’: Finn Dividend 🐟, Sister Buttermilk 🥞 and the never-before-seen CEO David Doolittle. 📈

Collect 4 out of 20 planned #FoodPic special burger photos. 📷

Pure, human-made burger-designing fun. 🥳

What not to expect in the Burger Bois demo:

Steam Deck compatibility (yet! Coming very soon.)

Contemplation on the meaning of life. 🤔

Tacos, soup, or other non-sandwich foodstuffs. 🙅

A how-to guide for successful food business management. 📉

Authentic Van Gogh artworks. 🖼️

Hot singles in your area. 😏

Yogurt cultures. 🦠

Tried the demo? Please leave us a review!

Your reviews help so much to give us more visibility on Steam. More visibility = more wishlists = our pets get more treats!

We’ve also opened up our Discord to the public! If you like what you see, and you want to chat with other up-and-coming burger savants, please join us on Discord, say hi, share your beautiful (or monstrous) burger creations and let’s have fun. 😄♥️

(P.S. Against our better judgement, we may try making some of the creations you post on Discord in real life!)

See you on Steam & Discord! 😘

Jess, Alex, Jackal & Anthony

[mischiefmakers-studio]

Dev Update #9: New Year, New Feature Reveal

Hello flavor artisans,

Whether beautiful or monstrous, the most memorable burgers share one thing in common: unusual ingredients. To celebrate the Global Foodie Faire Steam Event (starting today!), we’re unveiling a new feature: how you’ll GET those glorious ingredients!

Groce-2-Go comes-2-u

During your in-game day, you’ll be able to dial up your local grocery vendor, Groce-2-Go.

What that grocery cart carries depends on which location you’re at. Each parking spot has its own theme, from burger basics at The Truck Stop, to comfort foods at The Make-Out Point Drive-in Movie Theatre and artisanal goods at The Farmer’s Market… with 100+ ingredients in the final game, you’ll be spoiled for choice. 

Not every ingredient is available every day though! Some ingredients are rarer than others, so you’ll need to check back over time and stock up while you can if you want to collect them all.

Plus, every visit comes with a free sample - this business-kid understands the value of customer retention!

Meet the local Grocery Tycoon

A 12-year old child who runs a bike powered grocery cart called Groce-2-Go (and has the thighs to prove it). She has a cut-throat chokehold on the mobile grocery cart sector. I’m not saying she’d do anything to succeed, but it does make you wonder what happened to her competitors… 

A fiercely competitive business owner, she’s successfully driven off every other grocery supplier in the area. With the business acumen of Cardamon (Bee & Puppycat), and the enthusiasm of Louise (Bob’s Burgers), she’s who I want to be when I grow up.

Imagine being this sure of yourself all the time. What a life that must be.

Say her name

We will! …when we’ve decided for sure what it is. We’ve bandied around the names Trixie, Felicia, Squirt, Pebbles, and Bubbles - but Pebbles is looking like a top contender.

What do you reckon? We'd love to hear your name ideas!

(I have a feeling it might just end up being Pebbles. Like how the placeholder ‘Burger Bois’ became the final game name!)

Until our next delivery, Jess, Alex, Jackal & Anthony

Burger Bois on Steam

A food truck simulator about flavor, not labor. As chief burger creative, design perfect sandwiches and craft your customers’ most vague req

[mischiefmakers-studio]

Dev Update #8: What the Truck? (Brought to you by Frosty Mini)

Kia ora hungry hungry gamers,

What do burgers and ice cream have in common? That’s right: it’s Frosty Games Fest! Specifically, Frosty Mini, which kicked off today, with Burger Bois featured in the Steam event.

To celebrate, we’re bringing you a bunch of exclusive never-before-seen concept work of our beloved Burger Truck.

Introducing ol’ reliable

When you win a prize, you generally tend to assume you’re getting something shiny, new, and exciting.

The truck Patty wins is only one of these three things. Though worn around the edges, this faithful burger-steed will be the secret ingredient to Patty & Fry’s attempt to take the world by storm. She may lack pizazz, but she makes up for it by oozing charm (and perhaps some kind of vehicle fluid).

They say “you get what you pay for”, which in Patty’s case, was nothing.

Designing the Truck

There were so many different directions we discussed for the truck design.

Burger shaped? No - too OTT after just designing Patty & Fry to look like their namesakes.

Caravan-conversion? Naw - that’s what Patty would have done if she’d started it herself, but this is acquired from someone else.

Kids-toy inspired? YES. [Cue heavy breathing from Sylvanian Families/Calico Critters-obsessed art director Jess]

Believe it or not, this was the first time our artist Jackal had ever designed a vehicle! Fortunately, they found exactly the advice they needed in the Etherington Brothers’ How to Think When You Draw books. (Highly recommend checking them out!)

Our initial sketches focused on exploring different cabin and body shapes to see what felt right, as well as exploring motifs like the dorsal fin, awnings, menu signs, and the crooked exhaust pipe.

There were features we loved from each of these! The honky tonk cabin at the bottom left was an immediate favourite, but it felt a touch detached from the rest of the body. From here Jackal explored making the body more asymmetrical, integrating it with the cabin, and exploring what kind of decorations it might have.

The burger sign and the rectangular tail flag were clear winners for us, so we combined them and began exploring colour. The initial green (top left below) caught our eye, but didn’t feel right with the Burger Bois logo, so we explored a number of options inspired by both classic VW Beetle colours, and fast food tropes.

Sometimes in art, you’ve gotta explore your options to see what you’re missing, and in the end, the answer was green all along! It turned out all it needed was bumping up the saturation, and giving contrast to the interior (bottom right).

On the road

Sucker that she is for cute tiny models, Jess realised we now had an opportunity on our hands. What if we could 3D print the truck and give it away as a lil gift for people at events!? (...and also keep one spare for her desk.)

After recruiting Connor from Toroa: Skycall (also part of Frosty Mini!) to model the truck for us, and Jess’ husband to do the printing, we ended up with this:

Turns out Jess isn’t the only one excited about silly lil minis. People like Ryan (left) were delighted by their new acquisitions - and we recently received photos from Vee (right) of her post-apocalyptic makeover version! 🤩It’s SO cool to see these trucks out in the wild.

‘Till our next visit

Would you want a mini Burger Bois truck? We’re thinking about doing a bulk order sometime, ‘cuz we’d love to see more of what people do with them! If you received one of our trucks last year, send us a photo - whether it’s in its original form, or had a makeover. We’d love to see them. 🙏

Until next time,

Jess, Alex, Jackal & Anthony

Burger Bois on Steam

A food truck simulator about flavor, not labor. As chief burger creative, design perfect sandwiches and craft your customers’ most vague req

[mischiefmakers-studio]

Burger Bois is a food truck simulation game about flavor, not labor!

🍔 Design bespoke burgers for vague requests

👀 Impress relatably weird customers

🚚 Unlock new locations & unusual ingredients

🎨 Collect 20 #FoodPics by indie artists!

Wishlist: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3224290/Burger_Bois/

[mischiefmakers-studio]

Moroccan spiced lamb rump, lettuce, roasted pumpkin, capsicum & mint salsa, Tzatziki sauce and mayo.

...still thinking about this burger two days later. 😌

[galewindstudios]

| Eggtober2025 #3: Burger

Runny yolk + burger-- God tier combination.

[copperbadge]

Men, boys, and eggs of my acquaintance, I cannot stress this enough:

Nobody worth being with will ever judge you based on your deli sandwich choices.

Sincerely, a dude who had to watch like two dozen men pretend to find vegetarian sandwiches unthinkable in order to maintain a sense of masculinity today.

[copperbadge]

The sando gender spectrum I osmoted this weekend according to a specific type of dude:

1. Roast beef is the most masculine of sandwiches. The only sandwich it is permissible to ask for by name (we did not have roast beef as an option).

2. Ham is an acceptable substitute for roast beef. There appears to be some controversy, however, over the bread options; we only had two, croissant or ancient grains roll (gluten free). Croissant is considered slightly more manly than ancient grains UNLESS you are under 20 in which case "ancient grain" sounds badass.

3. Turkey is okay, obviously not ham but if you don't like ham it's an option as long as you don't show enthusiasm for it. Definitely has to have mayo however. Mustard is a bit much. (Initial field research indicates mayo is the manliest of condiments but we have not introduced barbecue sauce into the study yet.)

4. Chicken salad is woman food. Absolutely not acceptable unless you announce loudly that it's for your wife or that she's making you for your health.

5. Vegetarian wraps require a recoil reaction or a sheepish "oh, no, no, what meats do you have?" protest. We had the veggie wraps off to one side so vegetarians could get to them more easily, and guys would come up to the wrap boxes because there was no crowd/line, then I'd say "that's veggie wraps" and they'd stagger back.

To be clear, most of the people of all genders at the event were totally fine, this was a small and specific set of guys -- mostly older dudes and (unsurprisingly) their young sons or grandsons. Maybe 20-30 people out of the 400+ attendees. But it really was both sad and a little funny to watch them unnecessarily assert their manhood using deli meat to me, a guy in a floral shirt with neon blue hair handing out box lunches at a charity event. My indifference to your masculinity is so vast it has its own international calling code, fellas.

[copperbadge]

Friends, I have volunteered in the lunch tent once more and I have new scientific findings to share regarding the Sandwich Gender Spectrum.

We still do not serve roast beef, the most toxically manly of all sandwiches, but it turns out that there is a sandwich option almost as masculine, the mention of which will preclude a certain type of dude from even asking for roast beef:

The Italian.

For those unfamiliar, an Italian sandwich in most American sandwich shops is composed of ham, capicola, salami, and sometimes pepperoni, with provolone, the usual sandwich veggies, and a drizzle of Italian dressing.

The hierarchy from ham-downwards remains undisturbed by this revelation currently rocking sandwich discourse, but new data has indicated that the Italian sandwich occupies a special place above ham and technically below roast beef but so acceptable a substitute for roast beef that I only had one guy ask me for it this time around. I would say, "We have ham, Italian, turkey, or veggie," and the Certain Kind Of Man would look skeptically at the ham and then ask for an Italian.

I am now working on my doctoral thesis in Sandwich Gender, where I will be examining whether there is a direct correlation between how masculine a sandwich is and how weirdly homoerotic the name is. I'm going to call it "I'd Like An Italian: Gender And Sexuality Between The Buns."

[copperbadge]

Ahead of the Sandwich Gender Spectrum Studies Department's annual report on the September 2025 new data release, I wanted to share some recent findings by a research colleague at a prestigious academic institution on the east coast:

My sample size is growing all the time and my research is replicable.

[copperbadge]

Field work in sandwich gender studies, sandothropology if you will, can be challenging at times. While my thesis has been supported by both independent researchers such as above and grant-holding professionals (aka "people who work in food service"), the window of time in which I perform my yearly field survey is brief.

This year a new variable was introduced. The selection of sandwiches we were given to hand out was reduced to three: ham, turkey, or vegetarian. For the first time, the vegetarian option was a sandwich and not a wrap, as well.

There seems to be something about the idea of a wrap that makes it particularly unpalatable to a Certain Kind Of Person; we didn't have anyone getting hissy about being offered vegetables this year, and also got far fewer remarks about getting a turkey sandwich "for the wife" or "because she's making me". Perhaps when your options are realistically ham or turkey, rather than an array of choices that you have to navigate correctly, the social pressure eases off. Plus, ham and turkey both fall in the middle of the spectrum, so they're a little more ambiguous than say, roast beef and chicken salad. Why bother performing gender for two almost equivalent options? (There's a bisexuality joke in here somewhere.)

I did have one guy furiously lecture me for about two minutes because we didn't have any sandwiches on wholegrain bread, but if we'd had more sandwich options he'd have been mad we were spending the organization's money unwisely on sandwich fripperies (I know him of old) so that barely registered.

[mischiefmakers-studio]

now I wanna know how these trends hold up with burgers 🤔

[specclee]

compilation of food artworks i've made hehe 😋

[mischiefmakers-studio]

i just ate breakfast but what if... second breakfast?

[mischiefmakers-studio]

Burger Bois Dev Update #7: Would you like Fry with that?

Meet your right hand man, Fry

Hello burger connoisseurs,

Whilst any meal can stand on its own, this burger truck is at its best with a side of Fry. Continuing our behind the scenes series, let’s take a look at your partner in food-crimes!

As a fry cook, Fry cooks

When Patty accidentally, uh, ‘acquired’ the business, it came with a few things: a worn but trusty truck, a much maligned reputation, and a resident cook named Fry.

Fry’s been with this food truck for a while, but its failings were despite his best efforts - not because of them. You can be an excellent cook and still dish up disasters if your boss is as bad at flavor design as the last guy was. 

Fry has a feeling that things will be different with Patty in charge, though! Despite meeting five minutes ago, it feels like they’ve been in sync for years.

This man is here to chill with the grill.

Designing Fry

What Patty lacks in chill, Fry more than makes up for. Astoundingly aloof, Fry is unflinching over a vat of boiling oil or a piping hot grill. Is that just his natural demeanor, or a questionable pattern of self-medication? Who’s to say?

Fry is a love letter to some of our favourite definitely-not-stoner characters of children's cartoons, such as Shaggy from Scooby Doo, Trent from Daria, Greg from the Steven Universe, and lowkey Crush from Finding Nemo. 

Like some of these characters, Fry is more than just a chill bro, although he’s definitely also that. He’s quietly the brains of the operation - helping Patty work through difficult situations with an impressively level head, and managing the many moving parts of the Burger Bois kitchen with nary a complaint.

As we mentioned in the last update (read it here!), visually we wanted Patty & Fry to represent their namesakes. But fried potato comes in lots of shapes and sizes - crinkle cut, wedges, shoestring, steak cut… which meant that our early Fry concepts explored a bunch of different body shapes!

A broad exploration like this tends to reveal things you hadn’t known yourself about the character! We quickly realised that he needed to be tall, to contrast Patty. That he had a bit of a lazy grin, like the second concept. That he was definitely a slouchy, comfy dresser like the third concept… but he was absolutely NOT a bishounen like that. And of all the concepts, we loved how the crinkle cut fries haircut immediately connected with the fries he’s named for. The next step was to refine these ideas into the same guy.

We explored a few different outfits for him, but the jeans & hoodie version stood out to us as what this laidback guy would be happiest wearing whilst working. The checkered flannel and round sunnies were a close contender, but it felt more like his idea of dressing up for a special occasion to us.

One of our visual design inspirations was Mr Fryman from Steven Universe. We adored how silly his shoestring fries hair was, and part of our brief to artist Jackal was to explore our own version of it, which we think they’ve nailed! 

We did end up crinkling the cut of the hair a bit further during the final stage. As shown by the comparison above, we realised it could be misinterpreted as dreadlocks, which it’s not meant to be!

Which might have you wondering: “what is the deal with his hair? Is it made of fries? Are fries growing from his head? Has he just styled it to look like fries?”

And you’re welcome to wonder. :)

Peace out (for now)

We’re really enjoying doing these lil game-dev process explorations! Next time we’ll be back to yap about The Truck - but what else would you like to hear about? Reply here, or @ us on socials to let us know!

Until next time, Jess, Alex, Jackal & Anthony

Burger Bois on Steam

A food truck simulator about flavor, not labor. As chief burger creative, design perfect sandwiches and craft your customers’ most vague req

[mirrutatep]

Grilled ham & cheese!

twitter ♦ prints ♦ tip jar

[mischiefmakers-studio]

celebrating good news the best way we know how 😌

[mischiefmakers-studio]

Burger Bois Dev Update #6: who is she?

Introducing Patty: accidental business owner

Hello supporters of the great burger agenda!

Remember when you were a kid, and video games used to come with a lil booklet telling you all about the world and the characters? WE WANNA BRING THAT BACK. 

She is all of us. 

P is for Player Character, and also Patty

A fiend for entering no-effort competitions, Patty may have bitten off more than she can chew when she won this failing burger truck. 

She’s not the type to put much thought into the long term, but hey, now that she’s here, she could totally design some burgers and run a business. After all, it’s one failing business, how hard could it be?

This is the face of someone who’s never worked in hospitality before.

Designing Patty

Patty’s character is inspired by a few of our favourite cartoons. Here’s a recipe for designing Patty:

1 cup of Bee’s determination to march to her own beat, even to her own detriment. (Bee & Puppycat)

½ cup of Steven’s willingness to see the best in everybody and everything. (Steven Universe)

¼ cup of Mordecai’s insecurities and immaturity. (The Regular Show)

¾ cup of Linda’s unflinching enthusiasm. (Bob’s Burgers)

3 heaped tablespoons of Dipper’s creative problem solving… and habit of making things worse for himself. (Gravity Falls)

1 teaspoon of Spongebob’s reckless optimism. (Spongebob Squarepants)

Throw them all in a grinder until the meat is nice and minced, then shape it into a Patty. Enjoy that mental image! :)

Patty is a character of indeterminate age, and only slightly more determinate gender. She’s happy to use whatever pronouns people call her. She has more important things to think about, like if she could deep-fry a taco (yes) and if it’s safe to do so in the food truck while Fry isn’t around (no).

While Patty doesn’t exactly love to work, she’d rather drive this truck into the ocean and take Fry and a week’s supply of burger ingredients with her than be perceived as lazy. Below her own insecurities though, what she really wants is to put her feet up, enjoy some munchies and imagine she is free from the pressing weight of capitalism. 

Visually, we knew we wanted Patty and Fry to feel like their namesakes, so a lot of our discussion revolved around “this, but people”:

Courtesy of BanjoZebra on Wikimedia Commons.

Our artist Jackal took the idea and ran with it through her textured hair and layered burger coloured clothing! Fun fact: we were exploring how we wanted to do the player character’s gender at the same time as exploring her design, so these concept sketches are varying degrees of masc to femme. 

We landed in butch-femme territory in the end, and it just feels right somehow. 😌💅

When we moved into colour design, we made an unexpected discovery…

Entirely unintentional, but it tickled us. 😂

A relatably weird little world

We hope you’ve enjoyed this lil peek behind the curtain. We’d love to do another one of these sometime for Fry, or even the Truck (vehicle design is fun!), so watch this space. 👀

Until next time, Jess, Alex, Jackal & Anthony

Burger Bois on Steam

A food truck simulator about flavor, not labor. As chief burger creative, design perfect sandwiches and craft your customers’ most vague req

P.S. "Where are dev updates 1-5 you might ask?". They're on our Steam page, if you're really curious. 🤭I just wanted to get our Tumblr caught up so I skipped ahead. We usually publish these every other month or so and it'd take forever to catch up, oops.

[sarinisanta]

I cooked this the other day. Haven't been cooking much lately, but I'm proud I did this one ^^

It is a burger with mustard-mayonaise-pedro Ximénez reduction sauce, goat cheese, ibérico ham crunchies and caramelized balsamic vinegar onions.

[foodaddict83]

IG : @bestburgersonig

[nandanasree]

Indulge in our Honey Mustard Fillet Burger, featuring a crispy chicken breast, melted honey mustard cheese, fresh red onions, crisp lettuce, and creamy mayo. A must-try delight at the top Kebab restaurant in Auckland.

[mischiefmakers-studio]

Hello burger lovers 👁👄👁

We're Mischief Makers Studio: a group of friends from Aotearoa New Zealand making games that tingle the brain, and tickle the weenus.

We're using this blog to share behind the scenes art, design thinking, and shitposts for our debut game: Burger Bois!

But what even is a Burger Bois???

Life got you in a pickle? Are you always hanging on ’til fry-day? Got beef?

Burger Bois is a food truck simulator game about flavor, not labor. Play as Patty, the accidental owner of a failing bespoke burger business, and launch your new career as the owner-operator of a designer burger truck. Get the vibe for each customer, and craft unique sandwiches from start to finish, turning your customers’ most vague requests into culinary masterpieces.

Features

Food prep is out. Flavor design is in. Consider the real-world properties and flavors of ingredients to design uniquely satisfying burgers.

Who needs a menu anyway? Interpret increasingly vague requests to try and impress your customers.

Let’s get experimental. Play with your food to collect over 20 elusive #FoodPic illustrations, lovingly crafted by indie artists like @sharkees.

We’re all weird here. Get to know a cast of relatably weird friends, enemies, and customers (who are sometimes also enemies).

Lightheartedly cutthroat competition. Manage your truck and boost your reputation to score the hottest parking spots in town and show your rival who’s boss!

Flavor made real. Share your creations with friends—and even export the recipes so you can taste-test for yourself.

i wanna eat it. how?

This is our part time job, so we're still cooking! But if you wanna support us (thank you!), you can wishlist us on Steam.

And if you'd like these posts directly in your inbox (or to get in on future playtests!) sign up to our mailing list too. :D