Turbo Pizza

Serving customers in a pizza restaurant might not seem like the most thrilling premise for a game. But we misspent about a year of our lives playing Tapper on Spectrum back in the day and that's a game that consists of little more than slinging pints and glasses of wine down a bar at lairy pub-goers. So we know how addictive games based on seemingly dull customer service jobs can be.

Taking inspiration from the least forward-thinking of bosses, who puts one single person in charge of an exceedingly busy pizzeria, Turbo Pizza has you playing that single person – Rebecca – as she struggles to serve each customer within a time limit, after which they'll storm off without paying. It's a simple idea and one that's been done in various games on mobile before but this game's tight, gradually increasing difficulty level, cute graphics and easy-to-play stages make the experience much more palatable than most.

Getting around Turbo Pizza's kitchen is about as straightforward as navigating your own. Each appliance is easy to identify – there's a drinks machine, a coffee maker, ice cream maker, pizza ovens and cakes. When a customer enters your restaurant, you click the counter in front of them to give them a menu then go about dishing up their order. As they stand there – and from the moment they arrive, in fact – the clock ticks by and you have a limited time to serve them. It's quite a tight time limit, too, meaning you're always running about the kitchen seconds away from losing money.

With levels only completed by earning a target amount of cash, losing even one customer's cash can mean failure. But while it's normally the case you just need to multi-task a bit more efficiently – Rebecca can hold one item in each hand so getting used to methodically grabbing things and serving two customers at once gets the job done much quicker.

There's also a bit of a management element to Turbo Pizza. The money you earn in each level can be spent in between levels on new items for your kitchen. There are 20 new commodities in total, everything from a faster oven and chef training to get Rebecca moving about quicker, to a nice front door to encourage more customers through it, to a coffee machine that makes two cups at once. You can also upgrade your cakes and drinks to earn more money from them.

It's not just an incentive for those who like looking through cooking catalogues at new blenders, either – choosing the right upgrade can make all the difference to completing a certain level. If you fail a stage, you can go back and choose to buy a different appliance, so there's a certain amount of strategy involved, too.

They're great additions to a simple formula that compared to similar food-based offerings such as the inanely complicated Ratatouille and slightly dull Sushi Tycoon ensures Turbo Pizza is practically deserving of a Michelin star. Its 40 levels are more addictive than a plate of dough balls, in fact, while its wide-ranging appeal means you won't need to have spent your teenage years coveting a job in Pizza Hut to savour this.