Game: Cake Laboratory
System: Nintendo Switch
Publisher/Developer: Square Heads Games/ GrimTalin
Price: $2.99|€2.69 |£2.42
Age Rating: EU 3+ | USA E
Release Date: December 20th 2018
Review code kindly provided by GrimTalin
Hey everyone! For my first review on LadiesGamers, I was asked to play and review a little game called Cake Laboratory! Hadn’t heard of this game prior to playing it, so I was excited to check it out! I played through the entire game before writing my review- here are my thoughts and impressions. I figured I would break my review down into small sections and discuss each one!
Story
Haha… well, there isn’t much story to tell! Apparently your goal is to build the highest cake tower ever. To do this, you play through 50 levels of cake-dropping madness. If you beat all 50 levels, that sweet Golden Chapeu is yours!
Graphics and Sound
The graphics are cute and vibrant. The cakes look delicious enough to eat! There isn’t much variety to the backgrounds, though.
The soundtrack I could’ve done without, honestly. The same tune loops endlessly as you play- there is no variety at all. It starts to get annoying after awhile, but that’s what the mute button is for! You can easily toggle the music on and off in the main menu.
The sound effects are a bit of a different story, as I actually enjoyed them. The sounds the cakes make as they get squished on top of each other is entertaining, and the sound of stacking together cakes perfectly is quite satisfying.
Gameplay
It isn’t hard to just jump right in and start playing this game. To complete a level, you simply have to stack a certain number of cakes on top of each other. Arms move back and forth on the top of the screen, and you press A to drop your cake. That’s it!
As the levels continue, the arms move a little faster, and you have to stack cakes of varying sizes on top of each other. It never gets to the point where it becomes overly frustrating, even in the later levels.
Every so often, you will be prompted to make your own cake. You can choose from various bases, icing, and toppings. It’s fun the first couple of times you do it, but loses its charm after awhile.
Fun Factor and Replay Value
This game is fun, and I did enjoy playing it. However, gameplay remains the same throughout the entire game. There are no twists, no surprises, nothing like that- it’s pretty much the same for all 50 levels. The cakes vary in size, but that doesn’t affect the gameplay much. In fact, I thought it was a bit odd that the way you stack the cakes doesn’t even seem to matter. While playing similar games, the tower you are creating will lean and sway depending on how accurately you stack the blocks (or whatever it is you are using). In Cake Laboratory, even if I stacked one cake lopsided, as long as I centered the next cake, the tower wouldn’t fall. There was really no need to focus on balancing.
With all that being said, there unfortunately isn’t a whole lot of replay value once you complete all 50 levels. There are 3 stars to achieve on each level, which is not difficult to achieve. I think I had to replay only 4 or 5 levels to bump up my score from 2 to 3 stars.
Closing Remarks
This game is a fun little diversion and is perfectly suited for the on-the-go portability that the Switch provides. I played through the entire game in handheld mode, and full completion of the game took me about one hour. I don’t think I’ll play this game again anytime soon, because there just isn’t much else to do once you complete the game. Nevertheless, I’m going to give this game the rating of I Like It, because it was fun while it lasted!
