Noodle Bar

Noodle Bar puts you behind the counter of a tiny ramen stall on a night-market street: a striped awning, a string of paper lanterns, a neon bowl buzzing over the road and a wooden counter worn smooth by elbows. Customers sit down one at a time and a paper ticket appears above each of them showing the broth they want and the toppings that go on top, with a patience bar underneath that starts draining the moment they sit.

Every bowl is three quick decisions. Pick the broth — shoyu is clear and salty, miso is thick and sweet, tonkotsu is the creamy one — then drop the noodle basket into the water and lift it again while the timing bar is in the green. Pale noodles are edible, soggy ones are not, and noodles pulled at exactly the right moment earn a tip on their own. Then add the toppings: a soft egg with a runny yolk, a rolled slice of chashu, spring onion, sweetcorn and a standing sheet of nori. Hand over a bowl that matches the ticket exactly and the tip stacks on a combo multiplier that keeps climbing as long as you keep getting them right; get the broth wrong and you still get paid, but the combo is gone.

Twelve shifts open up one at a time. The second shift adds a miso pot next to the shoyu, and later shifts bring tonkotsu, chashu, corn and nori, more seats along the counter and less patience in everyone sitting at them. Three walkouts and the shift is over, so a clean night is worth three stars. Beyond the shifts there is an Endless shift with everything unlocked and a high score kept in your browser, and a Practice counter with no clock and no queue for learning where the green is. It plays with one thumb in portrait and widens to five seats on a desktop, and your stars and best score stay on your machine.