 Preview By: Jared Black |
Developer: | Digital Embryo |
| Publisher: | Majesco Entertainment | |
| Genre: | Simulation | |
| ESRB: | Everyone | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | N/A | |
| Estimated Release: | June 2008 |
I can’t claim to have any prior experience with the Cake Mania franchise, yet I jumped at the chance to preview this game when given the opportunity. The original Cake Mania has been one of the most successful casual games of all-time, with millions of downloads and a DS conversion that sold more than 300k copies. Cake Mania 2 picks up right where the original left off, throwing more ingredients into an already tasty formula while keeping the same basic recipe intact.
Gameplay in Cake Mania 2 is pretty straightforward. As Jill, the player fills cake orders for the various customers that come into the store. As new customers come into the store, the player must first click on the menu thought bubble above his or her head to give that customer a menu. After a few seconds, the thought bubble will turn to the type of cake the customer wants, which the player must then provide before the customer gets tired of waiting and walks out. Before long, orders start to build up, and the player is tapping all over the screen to queue up Jill’s next actions and keep her working as efficiently as possible.
One of the first things I noticed about Cake Mania 2 is how much it borrows from the real-time strategy genre. As Jill juggles the orders of up to four customers at a time, the player has to properly allocate up to three different ovens, frosting stations, and two different topper stations (with 8 total toppers) to deliver the desired results. While the ovens and frosting stations are upgradeable using the money earned in the game, with only a maximum of three of them the player must carefully prioritize orders based on their overall complexity and the current satisfaction of each customer. This is even trickier since each station can only handle four different cake shapes or frosting types, meaning that only two out of the three available stations will handle any one type. For example, if you have two open oven stations and only one has the shape of cake you need to make, it’s important to not allocate that oven to another shape that’s also part of a pending order.
As another example, suppose there are four customers, three with standard no-frills cake orders and one requesting a two-layer cake with a soccer ball topping. The latter order actually requires baking two separate cakes and then joining them together as layers, and then taking the two-layer cake to the topping station and waiting for the soccer ball to be applied. So with only three ovens it may make more sense to actually fill the no-frills orders first, rather than potentially lose one due to customer impatience while waiting on the two-layer cake to finish.
As I mentioned before, ovens and frosting stations are upgradeable. Upgrades not only provide a place to spend all of that money earned, but provide faster stations to fill orders faster as well. The player can also invest in a new TV to keep waiting customers happy, as well as a microwave oven to cook up complimentary cookies, and even faster shoes for Jill herself. These upgrades also follow the player from location to location during the game’s story mode, so upgrades don’t feel wasted when moving to different locations in the game. These locations are part of the game’s new branching storyline, in which the player can choose to go one of two different routes after each 12 month stop. Each stop provides different types of wacky customers, including aliens, federal agents, guys dressed as penguins, upper-class ladies, and more, and the order locations are selected in determines the game’s 6 different endings.
While the build I played appeared to be virtually finished, I did find a couple of quirks I hope are fixed before the game releases in June. If I queued up Jill to pick up money left on the counter by a paying customer, tapping on menu icons after that would fail to register until Jill actually made it to the money and picked it up. Even though the menu icon would show that I tapped it (and thus Jill should execute the action), Jill would just stand there and never actually do it. As a result, I’d then have to double-tap the menu icon again to cancel the original tap and re-initiate the action. This is a pretty annoying bug, and since the player’s attention is divided up between the various cooking stations on the screen this often cost me several precious seconds.
My other complaint has to do with the art, in that it was occasionally hard to see whether the top layer of a cake was a heart or a circle shape if the cake also had a topper on it obscuring part of the layer. This led to me throwing away a few multi-layered confections that had the wrong top layer (even though it looked right with only a miniscule difference), and ruined several otherwise perfect sessions.
Equal parts strategy and puzzle game, Cake Mania 2 is addictive enough that it’ll be another solid addition to the DS’ growing casual lineup whether my minor complaints are fixed before release or not, especially with a budget price of only $19.99. Cake Mania 2 releases this June, and is published by Majesco.
Posted: 2008-06-05 17:06:47 PST