Cake Mania Review
From LoveToKnow VideoGames
Cake Mania is a fast-paced, easy to learn arcade game that will grab your attention like no other. It continues the restaurant theme found in Diner Dash and Betty's Beer Bar but adds enough tweaks to make it stand out from the crowd. In Cake Mania, you must serve customers different cakes according to their requests, and you do so as quickly as you can. It's a game that's as much action as it is strategy, as you must learn the best way to run your business in order to make the most money. It's simple, it's fun, and it's even more addictive than cake itself.
About Cake Mania
You take on the role of Jill, a fresh graduate from culinary school who returns home to discover her grandparents have closed their bakery. Jill is devastated, but instead of moping around, she does something about it. She decides to open her own bakery to make enough money to re-open her grandparents' store. Starting with little more than an oven and a frosting machine in her home, Jill sets out on a four-year adventure.
The formula for playing Cake Mania is extremely simple, yet it leaves lots of room to expand in later levels. When a customer enters your bakery, your first task is to hand them a menu. Then, hop over to the oven to bake the cake they request, take it to the icing machine and select the correct flavor, add any decorations, then serve it up hot. The faster you serve customers, the happier they'll be and the better tip they'll leave.
Yummy New Toys
At the end of each round, you can purchase new appliances for your store or upgrade existing equipment. Invest in a faster oven, additional frosting stations, or even a better pair of shoes to let Jill move faster. There are also a few items that help keep customers content while their cake is being made. What you spend your money on is part of the strategy of Cake Mania. It's also one of the reasons why you'll want to keep playing: to try out your new toys.
There are four different locations you'll visit during Cake Mania, starting in your own home and moving through the beach and even the circus! Customers also come in several unique varieties, each with their own distinct needs. For example, young children who enter the store usually need to be served more quickly. Old ladies will demand complex cake combinations, but if you serve them well, they'll give you plenty of rewards. There are also holiday-themed customers such as Santa Claus, Cupid, and vampires for Halloween!
Piece of Cake
Anyone who's played one of the restaurant games will know how charmingly addictive they are. Cake Mania is a step above the rest due to its more streamlined gameplay and easier-to-understand mechanics. It will take you less than five minutes to learn how to play, yet you'll barely feel like you've mastered the game once you complete it.
While the idea of a game based on real-life retail experience doesn't sound agreeable, Cake Mania manages to take the stress out of the job and turns it into pure fun. You must manage a number of things at once, the most pressing being which order to do your tasks in order to best serve your customers.
Where to Play Cake Mania
Cake Mania is nothing but pure fun, plain and simple. There is an online version that's free to play, a downloadable demo for a more in-depth trial, and the full version is only $19.95 (note: both the demo and retail version listed are for Windows PCs only). Give it a try and you won't be able to stop.
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