irrelevantnostalgia

[irrelevantnostalgia]

A break from my normal content, but I'm studying for board exams and doing practice questions, and this is what one question bank recommends I use to memorize bactericidal drugs

That sure sounds like something Sephiroth would do

[irrelevantnostalgia]

Fashion Forward (2011)

Remember Risha's Boutique from Cake Mania: Lights, Camera, Action? You know how it only 25 levels? Well, how about we take that 25 levels and expand into 60. Why? Because, that's why.

❝𝐏𝐥𝐨𝐭❞

Risha was never meant for the small-town life. She has been a very supportive friend to Jill and been present for all her wacky adventures since Cake Mania 2, but by golly it is time for Risha to follow her passions and move to L.A to open up a boutique! She arrives to L.A. with good spirits and light in her eyes, but gets quickly challenged by a pretty powerful enemy--the diet culture and body-shaming of the 2000s (represented by a character named Andrea). She doesn't let this stop her, and she is determined to help band together likeminded people to start a body-inclusive fashion revolution!

The plot was more based and cool than the actual game, unfortunately.

As much as Risha slays, I don' think 60 levels of Risha's Boutique makes for an interesting experience. It quite literally is just the 25-level experience we got in Cake Mania: LCA, but 60 levels. It is ironic, as monotony is a critique that Cake Mania gets a lot but I love it despite how monotonous it can get. However, I personally feel as if it takes a while for the monotony to kick in Cake Mania games. It truly doesn't become boring until you have every upgrade on the planet to the point it becomes a piece of cake (pun intended) to play.

❝𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲❞

With this game, you are the oven and the froster, so to speak, who is making the cakes (giving customers the clothes they are asking for). As you play the game, you can unlock more collections of clothing and there are separate male and female collections. Eventually, there got to a point where they would just re-color previous clothing items because the collections felt neverending. To the game dev's credit, it took a while and a lot of collections before they did that. Granted, I also only bought one collection per level. There really isn't much to do besides that.

Also the male model that is used to advertise the male collections looks Cabybara-eque. Like Glen Powell.

There is at least the wrap-o-matic function of the game that I do appreciate. I think the game would have been more boring if this was automated because it at least adds a challenge and slows you down a bit. There are entire levels where everyone asks for a complicated wrap-pattern, so the game does attempt to up the ante.

There are also store upgrades that are there to help attempt to spice up the experience. Give you something to purchase besides new clothes collections.

You can purchase little decoration upgrades like a carpet, plant, and lights to spruce up the place to help extract more tips, and of course purchasing upgrades for the wrap-o-matic to add on some costs to customers. It feels a bit performative at times, to where I feel like buying a plant has as much impact as opening up a new tab, but it still felt more useful than the TV and distraction dessert machine funnily enough.

And of course, this is another game where they had the mini-game function to get extra points and money. Naturally, I personally got annoyed with doing them so I neglected this part of gameplay

Normally, by the time I have finished the game I would have noted the TV preferences of all the customers, but truthfully I have not as of typing this shortly after completing the game. I didn't even buy either of these contraptions until super late in the game when I knew I just had to make the purchase to get some trophy out of it.

The game mechanics are so, so simple which is how you can get away with not needing either of those tools. Customers usually come in with multiple items they want, and you can immediately tend to their demands because all you have to do is click on an item and drop it onto their bubble. If they are incapacitated due to some Blue Bubble Customer shenanigans, you have even more time to look for an item after getting rid of the troublemaker customer. If you have kept them waiting for way too damn long and they do end up going crazy on you, just find one item and they'll be pacified for some time.

The aspect of this game that would make it difficult to keep the customers happy is the bonus money and points you get from delivering all the clothing at the same time to a customer that orders 3 items. Sometimes I feel like I would have massive success from doing the 3-item bonus, but other times I would just ditch it and focus on customer patience by doing one item at a time. It almost felt intuitive on when to use which strategy. At the end of the day, you wanna shuffle them out as quickly as they came in, and if the 3-item bonus significantly slowed me down I would not use it.

❝𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐬❞

Asshole Actor

Cake Mania 2 throwback! He's with a different color scheme now

Rich Royalty Lady

Cake Mania 2 throwback! She's calmer than her first in-universe appearance. LA life has surprisingly slowed her down compared to when she would flip out at the aquarium-bakery

Doctor

Cake Mania 2 throwback!

Popstar

Cake Mania 2 throwback!

Buff Barnacle Boy

He's also a Cake Mania 2 throwback! Plus, he's one of those golden customers that orders multiple times.

Sad Sack Elephant

Is it a Cake Mania universe game without a Sad Sack appearance? I don't think it is.

Lola Fierreza

Cake Mania: LCA throwback! Looks like she had the same idea as the director she just worked with and decided to go to LA

Paris Hilton??? Idk

First Blue Bubble customer, she demands to be served first.

Walking Dead Extra

Just cause she's in a zombie apocalypse doesn't mean she can't look good!

Mad Scientist

He turns everyone into mimes

Corrupt Cop

He jails the adjacent customer!

Me in the Future

She's Thee Crazy Cat Lady and she is prolly baked, cause you can give her whatever to shuffle her out.

Biker Dude

Teen Girl

Teen boy

They get a heart when the other comes in

Opera Singer

Reporters

❝𝐌𝐲 𝐎𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐧❞

This is very mid. I think it is very funny that there are many Cake Mania 2 "throwback" customers in this game, because the same monotony I felt playing Cake Mania 2 is what I felt playing this game. Granted, the Cake Mania 2 torture was somewhat self-imposed. However, what I felt playing Cake Mania 2 after the 4th run is how I felt playing this game once. The novelty of the new collections to sell to people didn't inspire much excitement. It was too straightforward of game that didn't need 60 levels and thus didn't really need to be made its own game if this is the *only* thing the game offers.

I give this game a 25/60. As in a concept like this deserves 25 levels max if it isn't going to add anything else.

[irrelevantnostalgia]

Cake Mania: Back to the Bakery (2007)

Welcome to the expansion pack for the Cake Mania game!

The plot is fairly unremarkable, something about winning a competition so Jill can help her grandparents go on a cruise to Hawaii. A very much side quest plot.

Also what did they do to my girl Jill??

Everything gameplay-wise is very much kept the same from the first Cake Mania--customers (only one new edition), equipment, toppings..etc. Really, the only purpose of this game is to progress so the interior slowly upgrades itself.

Just to express again, I do not like the art. I am not sure what was attempted with Jill because it looks uncanny. She's been normal-spongebobified.

Like tf is this?

This is the only game that I truly could have gone without playing, but I couldn't finish this journey of mine without doing so! It is just a speedrun of Cake Mania since it is 36 versus 48 levels. For me it was fairly anti-climactic as well, but this is only because I played the Cake Mania games in order where they got more and more elaborate and challenging....and then I go back to this lol. I also think the extra 12 levels in the first game helped with the anticipation of the Big Vegas Level that you basically spend the entire game strategically upgrading your equipment for. This time, you can feel the game pick up in intensity faster, but it doesn't feel as high stakes when it does since its very been-there, done that.

Anyways, here is the new character

Uncle Sam

Favorite TV Show: News

And here are the various bakery interior upgrades

Year 1 - January

Year 1 - June - New walls

Year 1 - November - New Carpet

Year 2 - April - New Counter

Year 2 - September - New Middle Table

Year 3 - March - New Cake Displays

Year 3 - August - New Door

Personally, I would have liked a few new characters rather than just Uncle Sam. It would have been fun to have a customer from a rival bakery or one of the judges that decides who gets to go to Hawaii or something pop up. Hell, they could have done a topper change, I don't know. Cool interior though. The way I feel about this game is how others feel about any subsequent addition to Cake Mania where they are like...why did we need more of this again?

[irrelevantnostalgia]

Cake Mania: To the Max! (2011): Part 2

ᆞCᆞᆞhᆞᆞaᆞᆞrᆞᆞaᆞᆞcᆞᆞtᆞᆞeᆞᆞrᆞᆞsᆞ ᆞCᆞᆞoᆞᆞnᆞᆞtᆞᆞiᆞᆞnᆞᆞuᆞᆞeᆞᆞdᆞ

Psychic Sheila

Favorite TV Show: Cooking show

Continues to be the GOAT

Miss Feliday (She has a name!)

Favorite TV Show: News

Oil Baron

Favorite TV Show: Cooking show

He's the Chinese Emperor/Napoleon/Knight of this game

Vacation Santa

Favorite TV Show: Rock Concert

No Christmas in July, Santa's just here to chill...until he has to wait 0.5 more seconds than usual for a cake

6 B.C. (Before Cake Mania) Lance the Delivery Guy

Favorite TV Show: Cooking show

Actually, I don't know how long after this game Cake Mania's events would occur, but I think 6 years is a decent guess.

Risha

Favorite TV Show: News

So here is what I found interesting. Risha is supposedly Jill's BFF from high school in this game. Thus, she was at the very least commuting to Bakersfield to go to school everyday. Even scrolling through the level map displays pictures of her with bb Jill. This further hammers in the fact that she was at least exposed to Bakersfield, if not straight up grew up there.

In Cake Mania 2 she was introduced as Jill's "college friend." In Main St they had her acting like she had never been exposed to a small town before and that she was a bonafide City Slicker. How dare my mindless time management cake baking game not have continuity and ret-con the earlier roots of friendship! It's fine though, I prefer this timeline where they are childhood besties.

Here is the trophy display! I didn't collect all of them because I didn't finish upgrading everything, and a lot of the trophies are related to completing all the upgrades for certain equipment.

ᆞMᆞᆞyᆞ ᆞOᆞᆞpᆞᆞiᆞᆞnᆞᆞiᆞᆞoᆞᆞnᆞ

Did this game need to be made, especially since the Cake Mania series already reached its maximum capacity in terms of what it could offer to players? Not really. We easily could have had some cutscene to show Jill and Jack and their kids in Lights, Camera, Action! to at least wrap up that plotline. But the developers decided to crank one more Cake Mania game out, and frankly, I'm not mad about it. I am a bit biased though. Someone like me would enjoy a game where the of the main character of a mindless time management game got her lore expanded. Plus, I think this game made enough subtle adjustments in equipment to upgrade and character dynamics to where it can stand out from the first two Cake Manias. Hell, despite having a hefty 100 levels I still found this game to be less boring to play than Cake Mania 2 just because you were kept on your toes from beginning to end. So yes, I can take off my heart-goggles off this series and admit that this was the developers milking the last few drops the Cake Mania cow could offer, but I think they made those last drops count.

I give this game a 1989/1989 (Taylor's version)

ᆞJᆞᆞiᆞᆞlᆞᆞlᆞ ᆞLᆞᆞoᆞᆞrᆞᆞeᆞ!

This game was more story heavy than Cake Mania games typically are. I don't mean to talk down on the amazing cinematic time travel moon travel and king fu pride and prejudice plots, but this one has a more...grounded plot.

It starts off with Jill and Jack going through old photo albums of Jill from her childhood where they get to her high school pictures. This starts the flashback to 1989 when the game is set and when Jill is a senior in high school.

The level intros are excerpts from Jill's diary where she contemplates what she wants to do with her life, talks about prom preparations since throughout the game she agrees to go with Risha (as besties!) and agrees to make desserts for the celebration, and a few pop culture/current event references here and there (start of the Simpsons, Berlin wall). We learn that her mother was an accountant and her father a graphic designer, and the game confirms the assumption that they are dearly departed. Again, I didn't expect it to be groundbreaking stuff, but it is a bit endearing especially since the Cake Mania lore has expanded so much since the first game. The dope who came up with the idea of an aquarium bakery in Cake Mania 2 is now her husband, and we got to see what Jill's longest friendship with Risha was like (even if there was a bit of a ret-con haha).

bb Jill!

Jill with her parents!

Going to prom with a bestie > going to prom with a guy named Buck

Life advice with grandpa!

A possible hint as to what she should do in the future? She was getting geeked at the idea of making a cake for Prom after all!

Ah, the good 'ol yap session with your bestie. Instead of soda shops, these days we more likely frequent a coffee shop or boba tea shop....

Here is Jill and Risha at Prom with her parents looking down from heaven :D

[irrelevantnostalgia]

Cake Mania: To the Max! (2011): Part 1

ᆞPᆞᆞlᆞᆞoᆞᆞtᆞ

Jill and Jack are looking through Jill's old photo album with their twins and come across Jill's high school days. She starts to reminisce about the days of shoulder pads, neon everywhere, and her awkward phase. These high school days become the final installment of the Cake Mania series, where this time the players time travel back to 1989 to when Jill was navigating prom, applying to college, and figuring out what she wanted to do with her life! A fairly simple plot, a nice way to wind down this series from the evil directors and time travel to 500 BC and cake-baking in an aquarium. Almost like a nod to the normalcy of the first Cake Mania game, where we see the beginnings of Jill's adult life. This game goes back to the classic Cake Mania format with 100 levels of cake-baking only.

Fun fact, this is the first time I was able to finish this game in full! When I used to play this game back in the day, the fuck ass PC wiped my data once I reached around level 60. This happened to me twice. Another time when I actually got past level 60, I would get stuck on a later level where I would be unable to achieve even the bare minimum baking goal. I raged so hard about all these instances that I avoided playing the game for years (almost a decade lol).

ᆞWᆞᆞhᆞᆞaᆞᆞtᆞ'ᆞsᆞ ᆞNᆞᆞeᆞᆞwᆞ

Interior Mode: A big change in this game is that there is an "interior mode" option for the shopping/upgrade center. Now, you can "upgrade" the walls, floor, counter and door just like you can the oven or froster. This may seem similar to the "building upgrade" in Cake Mania Main St + Lights, Camera, Action since upgrading the building also changed the interior design of the building, but unlike in those games, the upgrades are supposed to confer actual advantages in gameplay.

Upgrading the walls is supposed to help with increasing tips, the floor is supposed to help Jill get around faster, the door is supposed to help with customer patience, and the counter upgrades help make room for more customers at a time. There are two one-time upgrades you can also make--buying a flower-pot can help make the sugar-rush last longer and buying a lamp permanently stops the equipment-breaking (yes, they kept this from the last game!).

For the most part, this is an excellent way to sprinkle-up the game and add more stuff to purchase to make the game less monotonous as you progress through the later levels. Compared to the rest of the games where eventually your profits made per level rise exponentially and never get spent past you getting all the key upgrades, I was budgeting out from Day 1 all the way to the very end.

In my personal opinion, I don't think all the interior upgrades really added much to improve gameplay. The counter getting longer does actually help in getting more customers on the screen at a time and more tips from the walls is always welcome. The two one-time upgrades were both good too, especially since it takes a while for you to save up funds for the lamp so it feels like a huge reward once you do get it. However, the door and floor upgrades didn't *feel* all that helpful. Upgrading Jill's shoes had more of an effect on helping her get around than the floor, and a cookie and the right channel do more for customer patience than the door. I would even say nothing makes those fuckers happy.

Speaking of helping reduce monotony, in this game there are some differences in how equipment is upgraded. Rather than buying 3 separate ovens and upgrading them individually, you instead have one massive oven with 4 compartments. You have to buy the compartments as well as additional cake shape options, but the speed upgrades affect the entire oven instead of each individual compartment. Meanwhile, the cake froster + decorator upgrades follow the same upgrade pattern but it doesn't just stop at gold. There are additional upgrade speeds you get until the final one, which looks like some brutalist industrial bullshit.

I'm sorry but it simply did not slay. I was hoping for some tacky neon 80s realness as the final upgrade.

Essentially, the point of all the previous word vomit is that in this game there are so many upgrades that you will be hustling and checking your budget from the beginning to the end, which is not something you do in the previous games (for the most part). I won't lie, I played this game twice and took two different approaches to upgrades and there would still be places that were not fully upgraded or there would be equipment that I would not get to purchasing at all.

Similar to the upgrades keeping you on your toes from beginning to the end in this game, so do the customers in some cases. I feel like a broken record, but in the previous games once you got to a certain point in the cake-baking game you could handle whatever customer pile-up gets thrown your way without thinking too hard about it. Even in the last game where you had the Lola Fierezzas changing everyone's orders. I wouldn't say that every level in this game had me locked in devoting 50% of my brain to ergonomics, but there was a certain type of level that stood out to me that I felt like I didn't experience before in my journey with Cake Mania. Let's introduce two characters.

80s Movie Mean Girl

Favorite TV show: Aerobics

She pairs up with other cheerleaders in the line.

Her name is Cindy and she is Jill's """"love rival""". I put that in heavy quotations because the Big Jock is interested in Jill but she is not into him, and Cindy is salty that Big Jock pays attention to Jill. Cue passive aggressiveness, which even spills into gameplay because she tips like ass. I'll be making 3-tier cakes for her and getting a fraction of what I would get if I made one for another customer, which makes levels where she shows up a significant amount really annoying to play.

Now let's introduce another character

DnD Dweeb

Favorite TV show: Cooking show

Do you see my pain now? Having him make a recurring appearance in a level was an absolute nightmare when it came to me wanting to obtain all superstar baking goals. The moment this twerp would show up in line I would pray that I could drop everything and get his cake out of the way so I could keep my properly compensating customers. Ngl though, if he wanted a 3 layer cake I would just take the L. Not giving myself carpel tunnel over this shit.

To deal with his appearances I invested in an overnight fridge earlier than I usually would purchase one so I could have expensive cakes ready to fly out, and I would constantly purchase a one-time-use power-up available in the upgrade shop that gets a customer out of the way. There were multiple levels with this dynamic and it was the worsttt.

On the flip side, I actually have to appreciate the aforementioned Big Jock for coming in because....

♥ Evil Bully from 80s movie ♥

Favorite TV show: Cooking show

He orders multiple times

Honestly, I think the real bully is gonna be the DnD Dweeb for turning this guy into a no-tipping ass cheerleader and making me hustle harder to meet my goals! Plus he increases the hearts on the other customers which is another point from me. One of the most satisfying feelings was collecting profits from this guy cause you would get like a $100+ boost! Lore wise, he is just an annoying fuck who is into Jill and doesn't pick up on the very obvious hint that she does not want to be his prom date.

There is another new aspect added to this game, which really did nothing for me. Instead of having me describe it with more word vomit, let me just share the screenshots:

Before I introduce the characters used for this example Imma just keep it real: I never used this shit as a part of my strategy to make customers happier. I just feel like gameplay moves way too fast to really give a shit especially when you have tools like the TV and cookies to keep them at bay. Really, what I would use this for is to just move customers up if there was a space between them just to make walking easier for Jill. Perhaps if I played this game in a more relaxed manner I could focus on different characters and how they impacted each other just based on line placement. But frankly, I didn't notice anything super obvious, besides the two characters used for the example. Speaking of...

Megumi Fushiguro

Favorite TV Show: News

He doesn't like "new wave guy"

Yuri Plisetsky if he had a stupid haircut

Favorite TV Show: News

He doesn't like "punk guy". Someone needs to create a new manga over these two STAT! Also, my personal headcanon is that this guy is the high school version of the businessman introduced in the first Cake Mania.

ᆞMᆞᆞoᆞᆞrᆞᆞeᆞ ᆞCᆞᆞhᆞᆞaᆞᆞrᆞᆞaᆞᆞcᆞᆞtᆞᆞeᆞᆞrᆞᆞsᆞ

Businessman Sr.

Favorite TV Show: Rock Concert

This guy has to be New Wave Guy's dad.

80s Bridezilla

Favorite TV Show: News

Unlike in the first Cake Mania where her younger sister is most likely Bridezilla, she actually has a similar Pirate/Mr Dinosaur effect where her flipping out causes others to flip out and leave.

Cop

Favorite TV Show: Rock Concert

♥Doctor♥

Favorite TV Show: Aerobics

420 Blaze It

Favorite TV Show: Aerobics

Seasons may change and the years may go on by....but this guy will always be high

Klepto Kelly (ft her Emo BF)

Favorite TV Show: Aerobics

Seasons may change and the years may go on by....but her desire to steal your money is always sky-high

Birth Control Inspo

Favorite TV Show: Rock Concert

Little Kid

Favorite TV Show: Aerobics

(Dr.) Miss Lily

Favorite TV Show: Aerobics

She is That Girl cause everyone wants to change their order to hers! I would especially let it happen if these customers came in with some basic fuckass cakes that would make no money. Plus, per Jill, she is also a doctor. Based on her cute and relaxed fit (unlike the scrubs doc) I could see her being a dermatologist or endocrinologist. Maybe psychiatrist cause she knows how to convince others to change their orders

Thanks to Tumblr's 30-picture limit in text posts, I will have to split this review up into two posts. Stay tuned for part 2!

[irrelevantnostalgia]

5. Cake Mania: Lights, Camera, Action (2011)

*Previously on Cake Mania: Main St*

It’s been a while! Throughout this entire cake mania saga I’ve applied, got accepted into, and started medical school. If I’m gonna be honest, this was not even the biggest contributor as to why the Lights, Camera, Action review took forever (I’ll get into another reason later). But I finally finished, and I’m ready to review! 

🄿🄻🄾🅃: Pregnancy is the milestone in Jill’s life that is the center of this next Cake Mania game. A game that represents the entirety of her pregnancy would be pretty boring (I would still play it) and at this point they can honestly tack on literally any kind of plot to go along with Jill’s pregnancy. I mean, she’s been to the moon and in Antarctica in Cake Mania 2. She’s time traveled. There are no rules to contain Jill and her journeys. This time, we are going to be dealing with..

A movie being shot in Bakersfield. Directed by...Michele Be. It is going to be a Pride and Prejudice remake with martial arts starring Tiny as Mr Darcy. It will additionally feature: explosions, aliens, a yeti monster, angry dwarves, and ninjas. It’s very lol-so-random-xD, very in-tune with the time that the game was developed and released. Bakersfield is being overrun by all kinds of interesting characters associated with the shooting of the movie. Eventually, it turns out that Michele Be is an evil fraud of a director that treats has cast and crew like dogshit. Risha is the one who saves the day and directs the movie in her own way.

This game is also repeating the set-up that Cake Mania: Main St has, which is welcome by me. Risha has ditched her stepping stone plant nursery and is now running a business that is more in line with her passions--a boutique. Since Tiny is one of the leads of the movie, we aren’t following his sushi restaurant. Now, we get to go through Giorno’s Pizzeria.

🅆🄷🄰🅃'🅂 🄽🄴🅆

No drink station: The drink station did not make a return this time around. I’m not sure why, I didn’t mind the addition of it and thought it was a nice break when things got crazy. This is just a guess on my part, but there is a new addition to the cake-making process that made its debut, and maybe they got rid of this to make room for that. 

Equipment breaking: Holy SHIT this is so annoying. The first time this happened was when I finally had enough money to upgrade my snail green oven to the slightly faster purple one. Literally the worst feeling on the planet……which is a welcome addition by me. This introduces conflict that breaks the monotony of the game once you become ultra mega gold standard equipment, where the angry and/or Blue Bubble customers become a minor nuisance instead of ruining the whole level. This also does not occur randomly, as it always occurs once you finish a certain level and the opening screen for the next level is Jack admitting to causing it. Speaking of Jack...

Fruit Station: Jill cannot run around like she usually does and now has let Jack take control of operations, which was a risky move, but what business runs without risks? So while Jack is wreaking havoc around the bakery, Jill is sitting in a corner running the fruit decoration station. This game is not going to let you get away with clicking one button to add fruit to the cake, no. Instead, to add fruit to the cake you have click on the cake in a set pattern. 

The equipment: There really isn’t much to say about them, just that I don’t know how I feel about the designs. They feel friendlier and more approachable, but they have less swag than the ones from Cake Mania 3 and Main St. 

Here is the final set up for everything ^_^

Risha’s Boutique has a similar “fruit station” where customers can request their clothes to be put in a box with a pretty bow

Risha’s Boutique and Giorno’s Pizzeria have the same general format of the Burger Barn and Sushi Restaurant from the previous game. But let me tell y’all...I could do just about anything and beat a Cake Mania level with the superstar goal. I could move as slow as that damn green equipment and make a surplus of like $400. These two games? If I do not sit in the right position, move my arm 0.00005 m/s slower than what is ideal, and pause for 0.0007 seconds to look at the screen to figure out where to click next I am not even going to make the bare minimum goal to get to the next level. Every move has to be perfectly choreographed in order to beat the level. At least with Giorno’s Pizzeria the ingredients are splayed out so you can easily click on what you need. In Risha’s Boutique, the clothes the customers want will be the tiniest little “shirt” hidden between the jackets that are puffier than the average New Yorker’s and you will just have to angle your cursor just right to click on it. So you would think that Giorno’s Pizzeria was a breeze, huh? 

Right?

Well, wrong. 

Now...I pride myself on being a good Cake Mania player. I pride myself on being a tenacious one too. I am willing to play a level 60 times in a row to ensure that I do not leave the game without a 100% rate of achieving superstar goals. This time though.....I had to raise my white flag :( 

Here is Level 18 of Giorno’s Pizzeria. Broke my streak and everything. This shit literally killed a large part of my soul. Had me tweaking and shaking and crying all at once. Once I hit $473 mark I just couldn’t do it anymore. I’m not sure how I pulled this off besides rapidly clicking on the TVs to keep all customers with a maximum number of hearts (thus, maximum number of tips) AND IT STILL WASN’T ENOUGH.

Level 18 is the reason why it took me so long to upload this review. This time last year, I was well on the way to finishing this game until I got to this level. I just couldn’t beat it, I would be like $20-30 off from the superstar goal most times, which is fairly significant in these two businesses, and when I was still $7 off after giving it my all I was seething.  I will not bullshit y’all, the sheer butthurt I felt at not being able to achieve the superstar goal made me take a long, loooooong hiatus from finishing it. And of course, life stuff. However, towards the end of this past semester I picked the game up again, and decided to clear all my progress and restart the entire game. I still didn’t get the superstar goal on day 18 of Giorno’s Pizzeria, but I was able to get it for the rest of the levels. I’m fine with this, I guess (no I’m not). 

But in all honesty, even with me being a dramatic sore loser (just guess my zodiac sign from this) one of the biggest factors I look for in these games is ways to keep it engaging and create some challenges. So I really cannot be that mad that Giorno’s Pizzeria made me work for that Superstar goal. With the cake-baking portion of the game, the monotony is inevitable even if it gets delayed with some new approaches to the recipe of the game. The kooky customers are annoying and do create troubles, but what will a Yeti that pisses everyone off really do when you have gold-standard equipment, high-speed TV, and unlimited distraction cookies? With Risha and Giorno’s games....YOU are the oven and the cake froster.  Each new upgrade you get is just keeping track of more and more possibilities that customers can throw at you. Especially Giorno’s! With Risha, only the most recent clothes collections get featured while old ones are thrown out. By the end of Giorno’s Pizzeria, you will have an entire produce aisle to keep track of, the customers will want every leafy green on their pizza, AND you will have to put that shit on them in order. Your cursor will be forced to move all around the screen. 

Another factor that had me seeing red during Giorno’s is that some of the dishes (like the pizza) would STILL have to bake after you compile all the ingredients 

I know, strange thing to complain about, but hear me out. In all of these games, you want the customers to get their orders and gtfo as soon as possible so you can fit in the maximum # of customers and thus get the maximum number of funds.  It’s why strategically upgrading equipment is so important in the cake-baking parts of these games. When it comes to Giorno’s Pizzeria, it already feels like an eternity gathering all the ingredients for an order. Longer than clicking a few buttons to make a cake. But then, on top of that for a pizza or lasagna you have to wait additional time for it to bake, and then have to wait on the damn customer to do their stupid emote before leaving!! After all of this, what do you get for an order? $40, maximum

Anyways, here are the low paying cheapskates themselves.

🄲🅄🅂🅃🄾🄼🄴🅁🅂

♥Ballerina♥

Favorite TV Show: ANTM

Omg this is so Lana Black Swan Coquette ^_^  

♥Lola Fierezza♥

Favorite TV Show: World Cup

She is That Girl. Because she is That Girl, the moment she steps in and reveals her order, every other customer changes their order to match hers. The Regina George effect. There would be whole levels dedicated to her recurring appearance, and it was fun figuring out how long I should delay handing the menu to her. There is an art to it!

Farmer

Favorite TV Show: ANTM 

Average Customer over the age of 50

Favorite TV Show: The Orange channel. I couldn’t think of a witty name for it so I’m just referring it by the button color on the TV 

He comes in with a stank attitude, so we’re already off to a great start. It takes maybe a few seconds and then he starts swinging his axe around, which causes customers to leave. Ruining your business in the process. They should have AXED him from this game!

♥Cameraman♥

Favorite TV Show: ANTM

Before you hand him a menu, he’ll film the customers in line which will increase their hearts. I feel like something like that may produce the opposite effect, but I suppose I am living in a post-TikTok world where the sight of someone filming me without my permission would turn me into the above customer

Little Kid

Favorite TV Show: Food Network

That’s so Raven 

Favorite TV Show: Food network

In a world filled with Blue Bubble Demons....the game devs decided to give us a character who is actually going to see the pearly gates. Psychic Sheila will use her crystal ball to automatically reveal the order of subsequent customers. It’s like Medieval-level power-up in Cake Mania 3, except we get an entire character who performs this task. I thank her for her service 

Me in the Future if I Become a Superhero

Favorite TV Show: World Cup

Meet Super Cat Lady. She turns people into mimes. Kinda lame, would be better if she turned them into cats. Maybe that’s not actually me in the future...

Mime

Favorite TV Show: Food network

Mimes pair up together in a line.

Biblically Accurate Naruto

Favorite TV Show: ANTM

Another Blue Bubble repeat customer. Ninja does exactly what he did last time make your job harder attack people with smokebombs and make them freeze in line.

Firefighter and Stuntman

Favorite TV Shows: ANTM and Food Network

I putting these two together because it is pretty funny. This doesn’t have much consequence for the gameplay or anything, but a stuntman and firefighter being in line together causes the firefighter to hose him lmao. 

Sad Sack: Chicken Edition 

Favorite TV Show: Orange Channel

Only the most Noble Knight

Favorite TV Show: ANTM

He’s such a good and noble knight. Such a gentleman. He demands to be served before everyone else so that the other customers can have more time looking at the menu ♥ such admirable behavior

Yeti

Favorite TV Show: Orange Channel

He is a double whammy. Not only does he piss people off, but his ass has the nerve to freeze people so they are stuck in place. Pick *one*, jackass! 

Klepto Kelly

Favorite TV Show: ANTM 

You Know, she looks really nice and snazzy. Her outfit must cost a lot *and* she’s ordering expensive cake. I wonder how she makes a living? Oh yeah, she steals from you, that’s how. 

Tiny: Our Leading Man!

Favorite TV Channel: Orange Channel

Another customer who helps you out instead of making you wanna tear your hair out. He orders multiple times, just like he has been doing in the past games!

Risha: Our Debut Director!

Favorite TV Channel: World Cup 

Jack: The dumbfuck

He is typically an endearing Himbo, but in these games......🙄........so you already know that in Risha and Giorno’s games you need to be ON IT! Well, when he walks in, the momentum that I would build up throughout the level would be thrown off because now I would need to use my peripheral vision and WAIT on the proper item to show up in his bubble before I could hand it to him and clear out another space for a proper customer. What’s more infuriating is that in Giorno’s level he would only “order” a single ingredient so I had to expend energy looking out for him only to receive $17 in return. And YES, he appeared in Level 18. Ugh!!!

♥Jill: La Reina del pastel♥

I hope the Duolingo lessons are paying off. 

Also I never figured out their favorite tv shows. Probably because I didn’t need to haha.

🄼🅈 🄾🄿🄸🄽🄸🄾🄽: I mean hey, what can I say? I can’t get too mad about them repeating a good recipe a second time in a row. I really enjoyed the Main St formatting, and think repeating it one more time to experiment with different kinds of secondary games is alongside adding more “Jill lore” is not a bad idea. Cake baking game is a classic and they basically maintained the formula that everyone knows and loves. The equipment breaking was a nice touch to create more “conflict.” Even if the secondary games (especially the damn pizzeria) made me cope and seethe, I didn’t hate them. In Main St, the Burger Barn and Sushi Restaurant were easy as shit and I beat them with very little struggle. These games, on the other hand, made me work a little bit more for the superstar goals. I don’t mind the more relaxed environment in some of  Main St’s secondary games, but as I expressed many times before, I appreciate a good challenge that keeps my on my toes (disregard the long stretch of temper tantrum I had about level 18 of the pizzeria). 

I give this game a ⓕⓡⓔⓢⓗ rating on the tomatometer! 

Now onto the choice screenshots!

When I saw this shit, I actually keeled over. Jack predicted family vlogging in 2011. 

*sighs* 

I love Risha talking about “high couture” and then the collection of clothes we are introduced to look like they are from JC Penny. 

Look at all of them slayinggggggg. The artstyle here is so pretty I love it. 

I will not lie, there were way more screenshots I could have gotten. I couldn’t though, because for some reason this game only works in full-screen. I tried changing my desktop resolution and everything, and the game still wouldn’t budge and I had to play this game full-screen. Which meant. One screenshot per every time I had the chance to play. Let me tell you, each and every screenshot featured in this review I got was very, very strategic. I never put so much brain power in determining when I want to get a screenshot of the customers in my life. 

After everything, here is my trophy room. 

Well, at least it doesn’t look like I’m missing a trophy from not being able to achieve superstar goals for all the levels in Giorno’s Pizzeria! 

[irrelevantnostalgia]

I have this sound engrained into my brain from playing Cake Mania: Main Street in 2012

[irrelevantnostalgia]

Jill Evans from Cake Mania 🎂♥️

[irrelevantnostalgia]

4. Cake Mania: Main St (2010)

I remember describing Cake Mania’s games’ progress as exponential once, but I think that the perfect graph to describe the progression of Cake Mania’s games with regards to quality is a sigmoidal curve. 

The first three games can be represented by the bottom of the curve. They’re a steady rise in terms of overall quality and then bam, the graph shoots up and levels off near the top. What is it about Cake Mania: Main St that I’m really loving? 

The plot is similar to the original Cake Mania. Evil MegaCorp, worse than the one before, is coming to Bakersfield. This time they are introducing a soulless new shopping mall which will push out the vibrant mom and pop shops. In response to this, Jill is going to get out her magic equipment and use cake to save Bakersfield, again. Only this time, she is going to be fighting the good fight alongside her friends and players are going to be able to play 4 different games. We get to play in Jill’s bakery, but also Jack’s burger joint, Risha’s plant nursery, and Tiny’s sushi restaurant. No need for Jill to defeat the evil by herself, she will now fight alongside her comrades.

𝓦𝓱𝓪𝓽'𝓼 𝓝𝓮𝔀

No More Animation: No more uncanny and incomplete animation. The cutscenes have returned to the normal comic format, but kept the voice-acting. Thank fuck.

Tiny as a part of the main gang: As the number of Cake Mania games increase, Jill’s inner circle does as well. In Cake Mania 2, we were introduced to Jack and Risha as people of importance in Jill’s life while Tiny was just another customer. He didn’t even have a name, he was just the sumo wrestler customer. In Cake Mania 3, he was a member of Jill’s entourage that got transported back in time. There was somewhat of an indication that Tiny has a bigger role in the game than some of the other members that got transported back, such as her grandpa and “Agent Bundt”/Deliveryman from Cake Mania, but not enough so I did not bother pointing it out. However, in this game Tiny is featured as one of the main characters in this game with his own stage so it is safe to say he has officially joined Jill’s inner circle.

This Entire Game: After 3 games of basically the Same Thing (except maybe some game-equivalent facelifts, haircuts, and manicures to give the game a new look), the game had to try something new. It would be foolish to radically change up the classic formula of Jill + Baking, because it works well. It is just getting old at this point. Instead of changing up Jill + Baking, why not just add more to do? 

Unlock It (Charli XCX ft. Kim Petras & Jay Park): We have the four businesses that we are going to operate and various flags around town that represent attractions. We can unlock these attractions through through gameplay. Once an attraction is unlocked the flag turns blue and we have the option to buy it, and we can even earn a small amount of money from the attraction for each level/”day” we complete.

Split the Bill: Since this game has the new objective of buying attractions around town, the money that you earn from the levels gets split--half of it goes to the fund to upgrade the equipment in the stage you are working in, like how it was for the rest of the games. The other half goes to the town fund (pictured above with the cash amount in the green sign). 

Upgrade U (Beyonce ft. Jay-Z): You can upgrade each location which makes it bigger and more elaborate on the town map, while changing the decoration a bit when you play the levels. This set up allows for each location to be a speed-run version of the previous games since you can experiences various “stages” across 25 levels.

This aspect is the “fluff that I was okay with doing but ultimately don’t give a shit about” that was present all throughout Cake Mania 3. I understand why we are purchasing attractions and making the town pretty, but I didn’t feel anything while doing it. Not excitement, not irritation. I suppose this trying to be a more “interactive” way of saving the town compared to Cake Mania where you just played levels and got the happy ending. However, this is not something that needs fixing. The entire game is just clicking buttons, but clicking buttons in a level provides you with some kind of excitement. Buying the attractions felt like opening up a new word document, it just didn’t add anything.

𝓛𝓸𝓬𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷𝓼

Evans’ Bakery

The old formula we all know and love is back with some minor tweaks. A lot of the stuff I thought was useless fluff in Cake Mania 3, such as the mini-games and stage-specific power ups, did not make a return in this game. However, the sugar rush power-up, drink station, and overnight fridge stayed!

Since these different locations have compressed an entire game’s experience into 25 levels, equipment and upgrades are cheaper again. You also have the option to sell your equipment if you are in a bind to get some money back.

Risha’s Flower Shop

This is legit the only location where I found it to be difficult to play at times, which is a good thing because every other location is fairly easy to play in my opinion.

Risha’s flower shop has the same set-up as Jill’s bakery. You have the flower “oven” with the wrapping “froster.” I’m not sure what it is, but they feel slower or the location goals are much more difficult to achieve. Literally the first time I played this game I rage-quit (lmao) this location because I was struggling to get the super goals, which eventually turned into struggling to get the bare minimum goal. Sometimes getting the super goals required replaying a level and hoping that the random amount of money each customer gave to you was a little higher because I would be $5 off. I would attempt to get either of the two “topping” machines to get some extra money tacked on to each order, but this would be during the snail-speed machine stages which ended up biting me in the ass since each order just took longer and you couldn’t get as many customers in.

 Eventually, I decided to just change the location of the “oven” and “froster” to be closer to each other and voila. Now, I wasn’t making Risha slow-walk across the stage constantly which saved time. It is odd because while adjusting the location of the oven+froster to be closer in any of the Cake Mania games helped a lot, but was not necessary for me to achieve the superstar goal. For Risha’s location it is practically necessary for me after the first few stages.

Also, Risha’s flower shop has two “decorators.” You can add the bouquet equivalent of a topping, ribbon, or both. I honestly recommend fully upgrading one before purchasing the other. By the time you fully upgrade one, you will have the funds to purchase all the upgrades for the other. 

Jack’s Burger Barn and Tiny’s Sumo Sushi 

These games have the same formula, similar to the relationship that Jill and Risha’s locations have. Jill and Risha’s locations are based around upgrading equipment. The orders are important, but the main objective is how you are going to invest the money you earn into making your establishment run more efficiently and churn out more money. Jack and Tiny’s locations have a set up where you have various ingredients spread out and have to make the orders yourself instead of only clicking buttons on an oven, kind of like the Burger Island games. The way to progress through their locations is to unlock and buy more recipes, and the only equipment you can buy is the distraction cookie machine and the TV. The recipes are also unlocked in order, so you can’t skip around with which recipes you purchase. 

Another interesting aspect to note about these games is that the rules for making the food are lenient. Throwing away a cake or a flower comes with a penalty, but with Jack and Tiny’s locations you can prepare as many burger patties or fried salmon as you want to make preparing orders more convenient. I found them to be much easier to play than Jill and Risha’s locations due to this reason. 

Here is the completed town, with all of the attractions unlocked and all the locations fully upgraded!

Here are all the trophies you can earn as well. For each location, (minus Evans’ Bakery) you can earn a trophy for unlocking it, fully upgrading it finishing all the levels, and finishing all the levels with the superstar baking goal. The balloons are for unlocking and purchasing all the local attractions, and of course the ribbon for completing the entire game. This is a much better approach to achievements than Cake Mania 3, which gave you a trophy for breathing.

Now it is time to introduce the stars of this game

𝓒𝓾𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓶𝓮𝓻𝓼

*Deep Sigh*

Favorite TV Station: Penguin Documentary

They look like the result of several generations of Nekogirl inbreeding for the worst traits. The pugs of Nekogirls.

Me in the Future

Favorite TV Station: Penguin documentary

Throwback from Cake Mania 2! Love to see her and her cat still thriving

Happy Lady

Favorite TV Station: Cartoons

Sad Sack: Hotdog Edition 

Favorite TV Station: X-Files 

A Cake Mania staple character

Chef Gordon

Favorite TV Station: News

One of many Blue Bubble customers

Marquis

Favorite TV Show: X-Files

Throwback from Cake Mania 3! He provides you with a sugar rush when he arrives

Super Matt

Favorite TV Show: News

Another beloved Blue Bubble customer. What’s great about this guy is that, unlike Napoleon and the Emperor from Cake Mania 3, this guy only immobilizes one customer adjacent to him. He does this by freezing them, so they are immobilized for a while. Gotta love it.

Ninja

Favorite TV Show: Cartoons

There can never be too many Blue Bubble customers. He’s like Super Matt, except he uses a smoke attack against customers instead of freezing them. Residents of Bakersfield get to truly pick their poison while waiting for cake or a burger.

1 Adult Customer

Favorite TV Show: Penguin documentary

This customer is just a SINGLE ADULT in a cute little coat. One individual in a coat. Only one. And they are grown, and definitely don’t need to be in school instead of waiting in line for flowers or sushi. 

Alien

Favorite TV Show: X-Files

Throwback from Cake Mania 2! And yes, they still change the channel to their favorite one. 

Pirate

Favorite TV Show: Penguin Documentary

Yep, this is customer goes from 0 to Blue Bubble if you anger him. He’s kinda like the Dinosaur from Cake Mania 3 in that regard. 

Tiny

Favorite TV Show: Penguin Documentary 

Throwback to Cake Mania 2!

Don Carlos

Favorite TV Show: X-Files

ANOTHER Blue Bubble customer, this time he is pulling a Robin Hood and trying to take your profits from you

Mr. Jack Jill-Evans

Favorite TV Show: News

Our favorite Himbo actually gets to be a customer

Dracula

Favorite TV Show: News

Throwback to Cake Mania! And also the Blue Bubble-customerification of Dracula. 

420 Blaze It

Favorite TV Show: You know what? Throughout the entire game I never learned his TV preference, because I didn’t have to. Because, yes, he will take literally ANYTHING. Also yeah he is high. 

♥This Guy♥

Favorite TV Show: X-files

I don’t know why he would make anyone happy. He’s just a guy. But he is the people’s guy because he lifts their spirits. 

Risha

What’s great about her is you don’t even have to hand her a menu, she is ready to order the moment she walks in. 

...and finally

♥La Reina, Queen of Cakes, the Malika of Marzipan....Jill Evans♥

Favorite TV Show: Cartoons

The division of customers either being neutral or affecting other customers with their mere presence has been reduced heavily in this game in favor of Blue Bubble customers. I don’t like this decision because I did like the chaos that customers like the mummy or witch provided. At the same time, it is not like having your customers frozen or changed to hot dogs makes for smooth gameplay, and it was still fun navigating the nonsense that came with this batch of Blue Bubble customers. Still, I prefer Cake Mania 3′s approach more since it allowed for both kinds of customers.

𝓜𝔂 𝓞𝓹𝓲𝓷𝓲𝓸𝓷

You can gauge what I think of this game from the entirety of this blogpost. I really, really like this as a next step for the Cake Mania series. It keeps the recipe that we all know and love and adds on to it instead of creating a completely unrecognizable game. The changes this game provided weren’t as fluffy as Cake Mania 3. There is maybe one aspect that was changed that I didn’t like, and even that was not an issue that made the game unplayable. I really think this is the furthest this series can go before the game gets too ridiculous and deviates from the main draw of the game.

I give this game a 4/4. As in, all 4 locations are fun!

Anyways, here are the choice screenshots

Self aware game is self aware

Comrade Jill? 

Throwback to Cake Mania 2!

The series portrays Jack to be a massive Himbo who has some interesting business ideas, which he basically is, but the dude is highkey very clever. This is hilarious.

I think this would be really a nice really poster at a dispensary.

Risha’s “thing” in this game is that she is a city slicker who is a fish out of water in this small town. This aspect about her gets contradicted in a later game when we find out that [spoiler].

Oh yeah, Jill is pregnant btw. 

Comrade Don

Nightmare fuel. Also can you tell this is from the late 2000s/early 2010s?

Grimes and Elon Musk is that you?

I’d imagine this is a normal day working in food service during the Bush-era

[irrelevantnostalgia]

Don’t mind me. Just getting nostalgia from old games

[irrelevantnostalgia]

Remember Jill from Cake Mania?

I wish I have time to play this game…

[irrelevantnostalgia]

I finished Cake Mania

[irrelevantnostalgia]

3. Cake Mania 3 (2008)

𝓟𝓵𝓸𝓽: The developments of Cake Mania 2 led to two very important developments in Jill’s life. The silver lining of sniffing sea creatures while trying to serve cake was the romance that bloomed between her and her friend Jack, which led to a marriage proposal. Alongside that, her journey into the future where she revived the tradition of cake baking led to her being gifted with the time bender. Cake Mania 3′s plot is an intersection of these two endings of Cake Mania 2. Jill is preparing for her wedding day and everything is normal, until the time bender which was just hanging around (for some reason) gets knocked over and broken into 5 pieces. Each piece sends one member of Jill’s entourage back into a different time period (Ancient Egypt, Some Chinese Dynasty idk which one, Jurassic Era, Revolutionary-Era France, and Medieval England). Jill, yet again, has to use the power of baking to rescue her family and friends.

𝒲𝒽𝒶𝓉'𝓈 𝒩𝑒𝓌

Animated Cutscenes with Voice Acting: They are incredibly uncanny looking because the only animation are the characters’ eyes blinking and the mouth moving. I personally prefer the original format because I don’t feel like this has really added anything. 

Cheaper Cakes: Cakes in this game are much cheaper. One single layer cake is ~$18-25 instead of ~$30-something in the previous two games. A 2x tier cake is ~$30 and a 3x tier cake is $40. This has a lot of implications for upgrading, especially since there are. . . . 

More Expensive Upgrades: The strategy that I proposed to dominating every Cake Mania game still stands, but it has a minor bump now. Cake decorators have an interesting upgrade style, where each topping is >$1000 and comes along with a speed upgrade. So rather than having to pay for all the toppings and then the speed upgrades afterwards, you can now increase toppings and speed at the same time. In the first few levels this is a little inconvenient since you can’t purchase a topping for cheap and then churn out more expensive cakes, but the profit goals have been adjusted to account for the cake prices. The baking equipment is also more expensive now, with the fastest oven upgrade being $4000.

Phone: You can buy a phone that will occasionally ring (typically not more than once, but there were a few times were it rang twice for me) to give you an extra order. You won’t get penalized if you don’t pick it up if you are too busy at the moment, which is nice. I think this is something that is nice to have if you aren’t quite reaching those baking goals so you can get an extra~ customer if you’re also having trouble clearing them out. Otherwise it is just a nice bonus

Drink Station: The developers added a little treat to help branch off from just making cakes and included the option for customers to get some tea, coffee, or hot chocolate as well. It is a nice break to have to do only one task for an order rather than up to 5 so I think this is a welcome addition. 

Power-ups: There are several power-ups in this game to help you manage dealing with customers. Most of them are stage-dependent and you can use them once per level. 

Ancient Egypt

I didn’t find this one to be all that helpful because it didn’t feel like a substantial amount of time was added on. 

Medieval England

This power-up was nice to have around, but I don’t think it made gameplay significantly easier since imo it doesn’t take a long time for a customer to make up their mind

Revolutionary-Era France

I think this one a pretty useful to have, especially if you’re prone to making mistakes. Not to flex, but I also didn’t find this one to be useful because I rarely make these kinds of errors and just stick the mistake cakes into the cake display fridge lol

Jurassic Era

I, surprise surprise, also never needed to use this one. I think this is useful if you are dealing with too many customers going ballistic or borderline ballistic to keep the line moving.

Chinese Dynasty

This one is the only power-up that I used regularly. Sometimes you just don’t feel like having to put down what you’re doing and give everyone in line a distraction cookie, or have to strategize on what TV show to put on (especially when that opera star is around). 

𝔽𝕌𝕌𝕋𝕌ℝ𝔼

I also didn’t use this one. Holy shit, I really didn’t need any of these power-ups besides just for the novelty. 

There are two additional power-ups that you can use that are re-charged by playing the mini-games. They are both located in the bottom left corner of the screen and are called “stop time” and “lightning feet.” These really weren’t all that amazing or helpful, and lightning feet becomes especially useless once you get Jill some better shoes. Sometimes I forgot these were even an option.

Mini-games: Every four levels in each stage a mini game becomes available to play where you can earn extra cash. There are three available to play and the difficulty of the game increases as you move across the stages. 

Serve-O-Rama

This is a fairly easy game to play. Even when the game speeds up and the stakes are higher, I can keep up with it fairly well. Not much to say.

Copy Cakes

This is the easiest mini-game in this entire game. Even when the cakes you have to copy become extremely elaborate, you can put the most piece of shit composition together and still pass with a B. You have to try to get a bad score. The only thing you will probably miss out on as the game gets difficult is extra points and cash you can win for the “time bonus.”

Cakey Makey

Man fuck this game. As the game speeds up and gets more difficult you basically can not make a single mistake or pause because so much shit is flying at you. Sure, if I really tried I could make this work and beat the levels. However, this is not worth the effort. I stop playing this mini-game once it becomes too much trouble. 

Cake Display Upgrade

This upgrade was revolutionary for the Cake Mania series. With this update we can bake the most expensive cakes, have them on display, and not be penalized if they don’t sell out by the end of the level. The common strategy with this new display update for players is to wait until the last customers leaves and not collect the currency laid out by the customers (because that signals the end of the level), bake 3 cakes with the most expensive toppings, and put them in the display case you have some solid $$-making cakes that you can just dish right out for the next level. 

Sugar Rush

As you get more upgrades to increase the speed of the equipment, you can churn out more cakes in a short amount of time. By the time you are able to get the really fast stuff, you’re going to be in the levels when customers are consistently ordering more and more elaborate cakes. The combination of these two factors creates the perfect environment for the sugar rush bonus. Literally just continually doing more and more tasks in a short amount of time causes the above bar to fill up, and once it is full you get the sugar rush where everything you do automatically happens (i.e. the cake immediately pops out and immediately gets frosted and decorated as well).

Now it is time to go over the various locations and the customers that are present there. Before I do, there is something interesting to point out. 

Back when I was a kid and I played this game mindlessly, I would just pick the first location to play at random. Unlike Cake Mania 2 where you only had the option to pick between 2 stages to progress through the game, in this game you have all 5 locations laid out and can pick whichever one you want to play next. I would want to spice it up each time I played this game and let’s just say I wasn’t the best at strategically upgrading my equipment at that point. What would end up happening is that I would practically be unable to reach even the minimum baking goal because I would be well into the game with shoddy equipment and the customers at full speed. 

Well, here is why

𝓔𝓰𝔂𝓹𝓽

Pharaoh

Favorite TV Channel: Caveman Comedy

♥Queen♥

Favorite TV Channel: Soap Opera

Since she makes customers happy, she gets a heart. Other customers that have the same effect will get the heart as well

Lady-in-Waiting

Favorite TV Channel: Caveman Comedy

♥Horus♥

Favorite TV Channel: News

Anubis

Favorite TV Channel: News

This is the first game with the Blue Bubble customer. Blue Bubble customers always do some fuckshit to the other customer which messes up the flow of the game. This dog of the dead turns the other customers into mummies after a few seconds have passed. What that means is, you will be 3/4 of the way done with an order and then Anubis shows up. You are hoping that the ammonite shell topping will be added on before Anubis does the inevitable. Then you remember that all of your equipment is of the snail green variety, and when the topping is half way added on Anubis changes the customer to a mummy. Not only does the customer change, but their order changes as well. Hope you have a cake stand to put the cake on!

Speaking of mummies....

Mummy 

Favorite TV Channel: Bad Girls Club

This is the first game where the effects that customers have on each other is as subtle as a stop sign. While the Queen and Horus make your life easier, the mummy is going to be the reason why you’re $10 off from reaching the superstar baking goal. The mummy is especially egregious because it feels like it shows up so often compared to other horrible customers. This is why many other players online recommend that you play Egypt first, so you can deal with the negative consequences of the mummy with lower stakes.

𝓜𝓮𝓭𝓲𝓮𝓿𝓪𝓵 𝓔𝓷𝓰𝓵𝓪𝓷𝓭

Is that a Pharaoh and Egyptian lady-in-waiting in line as well? Yes. The time bender didn’t just affect present-day!

Wizard

Favorite TV channel: Caveman Comedy

♥“Unicorn”♥

Favorite TV Channel: News

Looks like the sad sack finally got a promotion

Fairy

Favorite TV Channel: Caveman Comedy

Witch

Favorite TV Channel: Soap Opera

Not only does she piss other customers off, but she comes in with a nasty ass attitude with like 2 hearts present. What a customer.

Blue Bubble Witch

Favorite TV Channel: Soap Opera

She is the Anubis equivalent of this stage, where she turns customers into Monkeys instead. 

Robin Hood

Favorite TV Channel: Bad Girls Club

This is the other Blue Bubble customer for this stage. The strategy in Cake Mania and Cake Mania 2 when levels started getting crazy was to serve the customers that were present and not pick up the money they leave until all the present customers were served. I mentioned in the Cake Mania review that this strategy wouldn’t be useful all the time, and this is where it is not. Robin Hood’s quirk is that he steals money that you leave out on the counter :) Him and the Witch are most likely the reasons why Medieval England is encouraged to be the second stage when things are still relatively calm. 

𝓒𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓮𝓼𝓮 𝓓𝔂𝓷𝓪𝓼𝓽𝔂

Empress

Favorite TV Channel: Caveman Comedy

Palace Guard

Favorite TV Channel: Caveman Comedy

♥Opera Star♥

Favorite TV Channel: Soap Opera

Watch out! When you put on the TV, the opera star will automatically change the channel to the soap opera. Good thing we have this stage’s power up when we need it. 

♥Golden Dragon♥

Favorite TV Channel: Bad Girls Club

If two golden dragons are in line together, they pair up.

Green Dragon

Favorite TV Channel: Bad Girls Club

The Green Dragon orders multiple times.

Emperor

Favorite TV Channel: Bad Girls Club

He pisses everyone off, including me! I lose profit because people get so pissed they leave!

Blue Bubble Emperor

Favorite TV Channel: Bad Girls Club

This guy is super fun because his Blue Bubble power is to demand to be served before everyone else and blocks off contact between you and other customers.

𝓡𝓮𝓿𝓸𝓵𝓾𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷𝓪𝓻𝔂-𝓔𝓻𝓪 𝓕𝓻𝓪𝓷𝓬𝓮

♥Marquis♥

Favorite TV Channel: Soap Opera

♥Sugar Rush Marquis♥

Favorite TV Channel: Soap Opera

The moment he arrives, you get the sugar rush bonus. His presence really helps make this overall stage easier to play. 

Executioner 

Favorite TV Channel: Caveman Comedy

Quasimodo 

Favorite TV Channel: Caveman Comedy

Marie Antoinette 

Favorite TV Channel: Soap Opera

Jill is serving cakes. Marie Antoinette is serving LOOKS. She belongs at the Met Gala.

Napoleon

Favorite TV Channel:  Bad Girls Club

He does the same thing as the Blue Bubble Emperor.

Once you get to this level, you should have most of your shit together which should make it less difficult. 

𝓙𝓾𝓻𝓪𝓼𝓼𝓲𝓬 𝓔𝓻𝓪

T-Rex

Favorite TV Channel: News 

Lady D(iana)

Favorite Channel: Caveman Comedy

Hominid Ancestor

Favorite Channel: News

Rhino

Favorite Channel: Caveman Comedy

♥Monkey♥

Favorite Channel: News

♥Purple Monkey♥

Favorite Channel: News

They pair up with each other in line

None of the customers in this stage are over-the-top, and there are no Blue Bubble customers from this era which is why this stage is recommended to play last. At worst, you just get super impatient customers like the T-Rex, but the later stages of these games always get sped up with impatient customers.

Now that we helped rescue the members of Jill’s entourage, there is still the problem with everyone else appearing in the wrong time periods. To finish off Jill’s third hero’s journey, we must travel into the 𝔽𝕌𝕌𝕋𝕌ℝ𝔼:

I think these levels are fun since not all the customers from each stage get to “time travel” into subsequent stages, but in the 𝔽𝕌𝕌𝕋𝕌ℝ𝔼 levels we get to see everyone again.

When order is finally restored across the space-time continuum, Jill can finally have her wedding! You have the ability to design her cake. This is what I ended up making:

I had to honor the time-bender. 

𝓣𝓻𝓸𝓹𝓱𝓲𝓮𝓼

Trophies are given out like candy in this game. There’s trophies for getting superstar baking goal for every level, which makes sense. After all, you had to go above and beyond during gameplay to achieve that. There are trophies for getting the high score in storymode and in the mini-games, which also makes sense. Then we get trophies for fully upgrading equipment like the oven and the fridge. It’s like..okay..sure, I guess? That’s more like fulfilling a requirement on a checklist than an accomplishment that needs a trophy, but OK. There are also trophies for beating the different stages, as well trophies for beating each of the stages first. I suppose that is there to increase the replay value on the game. The oddest ones are trophies for using the “stop time” and “lightning feet” power-ups 3 times. Like……? I don’t know about y’all, but I’m more of a “quality” over “quantity” kind of gal and this is a bit much. 

Here is my collection:

I don’t gaf enough about filling the trophy room to overcome my apathy towards the “lightning feet” power-up (I got the trophy for the other power-up just by sheer coincidence) and my hatred towards cakey-makey.

𝓞𝓿𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓞𝓹𝓲𝓷𝓲𝓸𝓷

Gameplay wise, this is just the Cake Mania that we all know and love. This is fine because this recipe has held up so far. I’ve hinted in previous reviews that these games become much more elaborate with each new installation, and Cake Mania 3 does represent an exponential increase regarding elaborate presentation. Everything is much more bright and animated, which is definitely much nicer to look at, but how much of this is just underbaked fluff?

Most of the power-ups for this game didn’t add anything for me, but they also didn’t detract from the game either (especially considering I forgot they were even an option sometimes). I think the stage-specific ones are a cute idea since it gives the stage a little something extra. However, for me it just felt decorative. I think they can be helpful in the earlier levels when you’re still upgrading equipment, but a lot of these become kind of useless once you upgrade the equipment. I think the “Tao of Cake” is the most helpful overall. The one power-up that I really like is the sugar rush power-up, since the boost from it does beat even the fastest equipment. The mini-games are another addition that I didn’t love or hate since, again, it was just kind of there for me.

The addition of extra money-making strategies like the phone and the drink station is not something that I desperately needed from this game, but honestly I’m not mad. It’s simple and it weaves itself right in to the main gameplay. There are even times where I would hope to get some customers who just wanted tea once everything got crazy.

The customers in this game are the biggest improvement compared to previous games. I think the behavior of these customers is partly a continuation of what the approach was in Cake Mania 2 where there are mostly normal-behaving customers and then the crazies. This game also took a step further and made it very obvious who the bad customers were (there were even sfx to indicate when a bad customer would arrive) as well as the addition of the Blue Bubble customers. I think this did a great job of helping break the monotony of later levels, which is really the problem I think this type of game faces as you keep playing.

 I think this is a solid game overall, and the attempts at adding new features to the game was fairly okay. At worst, it just felt decorative and unnecessary which in the grand scheme of things isn’t really bad. I can understand wanting to do something besides changing up the plot and making it wackier to justify a sequel, so I don’t really blame them for experimenting a little bit. However, a lot of this is really surface level and I think more can be done to spice sugar up the franchise. The customers are much more interesting this time around, and I think the “sugar rush” and drink station can stay, so it wasn’t all fluff

I give this game a-little-too-much-buttercream-frosting on an otherwise good cake/10

I wonder what is next for these two lovebirds?

Before I forget, here are some choice screenshots

She’s right!

[irrelevantnostalgia]

2. Cake Mania 2 (2007)

Overall plot: After reviving Evans’ Bakery in the last game, Jill is Suffering from Success. Here come her two friends, Jack and Risha, that are in a tizzy and need her baking and business expertise. What starts out as lending a hand to  friends turns into much more than Jill bargained for. 

 You can start off this adventure by helping Risha attract customers to the rooftop of a hotel or Jack at an aquarium, and it only gets crazier from there. Cake Mania 2 is a choose-your-own-adventure that allows you to discover the various possibilities in the overall Cake Mania universe, with a total of 6 different endings. 

Jill ends up in various locations baking cakes in various scenarios such as karaoke in an aquarium and a potential Human-Martian conflict at a space station. She has many adventures and creates some really important core memories in her journeys around the world.

What’s new:

Jack and Risha: Jack and Risha are introduced in this game as Jill’s friends and the first two routes you can choose from. Not going to go into too much detail on them as of right now, but they are going to be important to the lore and will be featured in subsequent games. 

Superstar Baking Goal: To add some extra sprinkles to the fairly simple gameplay of Cake Mania we can work towards the Superstar baking goal, which is an additional milestone you can reach once you meet the minimum profit requirement to beat the level. Once you get your Winning Equipment Set Up (tm) you can easily get the Superstar Baking Goal so it really doesn’t feel like that much of a challenge. It is only really difficult to achieve it in the early levels. As a generous move from the developers, we are able to replay previous levels as many times as we want so I would  replay levels from the first stage far too many times than I would want to admit because I would be within like $10 of meeting the Superstar Baking Goal. Being smart about what equipment you choose is crucial for the beginning stages. Speaking of equipment. . . . 

Equipment upgrades: There are a lot of changes made to the equipment which made the game more exciting and challenging to play. Not by a lot, but you have to appreciate the little things

Ovens and Frosters - Not much changed for the ovens and frosters, except for one little adjustment. In this game, you get to have a larger variety of cake and frosting options instead of the 4 you were limited to in the first game. A common strategy with this game is to focus on upgrading one set of equipment rather than trying to juggle with 3 slow ones at a time, which is basically the Winning Strategy for all of these games Imo. There does come a time where you will need to dip your toes into investing in a second set and this is where the fun can begin. The second oven/froster set you buy will have a different cake or frosting options that you might not have with your Cake-Maker-5000 set, and you will most likely be making these upgrades when the game is already on full speed and full crazy from the customers. Your customers are going to order something that only the snail oven can provide which will slow you down. This is how you can break the monotony of later levels when you are Suffering From Success. Especially when you are replaying this game six times to get all the endings

I should add, once I got to my third replay of the game, I decided to make the game more difficult for myself for a longer period of time so I could feel something in my soul for much longer before it became monotonous. You can actually go a decent chunk of time with just the slow ovens/frosters before it becomes too slow to deal with the current speed. Sometimes I wouldn’t start upgrading until I got to the third stage. 

Decorators - You would think your journey upgrading the decorators would be over once you finally achieved the Purple Lightning Set, but you would be wrong. You are offered the additional upgrades of adding a frosting option to the decorators, and will have to go through with purchasing the various speeds like you would with any other piece of baking equipment. I suppose the idea was that you could just take an unfrosted take directly to the decorator and get the frosting+decoration done in the same general area. I didn’t think this made gameplay easier, but it did add some chaos since it offered frosting options that my lone froster at the time did not have and thus I dealt with lagging and stalling customers before I even bought a second oven or froster. I enjoyed the chaos more than the benefit it was trying to provide. Once I decided to stall upgrading my equipment until the third stage during my replays of the game, I didn’t bother getting the froster/decorator upgrades because they just aren’t all that helpful and seem excessive.

TV - The design changed (and this design will be maintained throughout the rest of the games) where there are now four buttons that correspond to a different channel. This is an upgrade from Cake Mania, where you had to control the TV channels with one button. Each upgrade to the TV makes the time between a show playing much shorter so you can distract customers with different channels much quicker

Microwave - This time around, each upgrade to the microwave not only makes it faster, but more cookies come out as well. 

Cake Stands - Cake stands were available in the first game as well, but I personally did not find any utility for them until now. Just like the the TV, the cake stand is now upgradable, so you can eventually display up to 3 cakes for customers to potentially purchase. This item was key for me to get the Superstar Baking Goal in earlier levels because I was able to display the most expensive cake I could make at the time for customers to pick, when they otherwise would have gotten a single tier cake w/ no decoration. Eventually you can wean off depending on it, but it is still a useful way to display cakes where you made an error so you can potentially sell it off rather than throwing it away and losing money (oh yeah, throwing away cakes comes with a penalty which becomes more expensive if the cake is frosted, has multiple tiers, and/or has decoration on it). Speaking of losing money, the downside to the cake stand is that if there are cakes still remaining at the end of the level, they’ll be treated as “thrown away” cakes and you will lose money, so I wouldn’t make cakes for the cake stands near the end of a level. 

The concept of cake preference has essentially been done away, since customers will order anything and everything. These customer descriptions are going to be so much emptier now. 

This button. This button is easily one of the best features the game has added and I’m glad it was done early on in the series. The tutorials are just so sloow I cannot stand it. 

Stages of the Game: 

Hotel

Aquarium

Antarctica 

TV Show set

Space Station

Future

The Six Endings

Intergalactic Ending

Rooftop w/ Risha --> Jack’s Aquarium --> Baking show in Tokyo --> Moon Mission

This doesn’t even seem like an unrealistic ending. Food definitely brings people (and humanoid aliens from the moon) together. 

Time-Warp Ending

 Jack’s Aquarium --> Pastries for Penguins --> Baking Show in Tokyo --> Fuuuuuuture

I wonder if this time bender will have any importance later on?

Penguin Conservation Ending:

Rooftop w/ Risha --> Baking Show in Tokyo --> Moon Mission --> Pastries for Penguins 

I wonder if she put a fish or shrimp filling in the cakes for the penguins

Proposal Ending

Rooftop w/ Risha --> Baking Show in Tokyo --> Moon Mission --> Jack’s Aquarium

Jack looked so dopey in the in the last panel that him being covered up by the window announcing the trophy is doing him a favor. The art for these games gets better, I promise!

Reality TV Legend ending

Jack’s Aquarium --> Pastries for Penguins --> Moon Mission --> Baking Show in Tokyo

If they created a Total Drama Islandesque animated baking competition hosted by Jill Evans, I would have totally watched it. 

Everlasting Bonds ending

Jack’s Aquarium --> Pastries for Penguins --> Moon Mission --> Rooftop w/ Risha

I feel like this is the perfect final ending of the game. 

Customers

Now time to address the little hellions themselves. I have to say, in my experience playing this game there is less rigidity when it comes to the customers’ dispositions. In comparison to the first game where there were clear angels and devils (and only two intermediates that I had to make a case for), the purgatory class is much much higher in this game.

Stone Cold Patience

There are only two customers that I think would be in any way comparable to the angelic class from Cake Mania, with regards to patience.

Police Officer

Favorite TV Station: News

This dude looks kinda familiar. Wonder where I have seen him before? He is just a simple guy ordering some simple cakes. Nothing more, nothing less. I don’t think I have even experienced a “close call” with this customer where I’m down to 2 hearts and have to scramble to distract him. 

Security Guard

Favorite TV Station: News

Whatever I said about the police officer customer’s behavior can be copied and pasted for this guy. If there is anyone to keep waiting just a teensy bit, it is this dude. One distraction cookie really does go a long way

That’s it!

The Relatively Calm Before the Storm

To be honest there aren’t that many notable customers in this tier to give a lot of commentary on, so some of them are just getting nothing because I’m not BSing sentences on some nothing ass characters. They just exist and you have to occasionally monitor them to see if they’re about to lose it. Good for zooming through gameplay, but that does contribute to the monotony of the game when there aren’t that many crazies around to throw you off. 

Cake Maniac 

Favorite TV Station: Astrology report 

He’s just a simple dude who wants some cake. Just has a little less patience than the other two. 

Hyperpop LEGEND

Favorite TV Station: Concert

This woman is a GODSEND. I have to add the angel wings for her because while her patience level is just fine, the effect her happiness can have on the other customers is contagious -- literally. 

A short aside

~

For my last review I was able to discuss with another person who is as much as a Cake Maniac as a I am about the game and my review. They said that they did remember customers like Dracula and Santa having an effect on customers, while that is something that I did not notice because to me it wasn’t too apparent. However, customers being able to affect other customers is something that I did notice in this game as it is much more obvious here. If your experience playing these games is different from mine I am curious so lmk.

~

If you put on her favorite TV station, she will starting singing and not only will her hearts increase because you are pandering to her, so will everyone else’s! It’s so perfect in those times where all the customers present will have TV tastes that are all over the place, and you don’t have enough cookies to feed everyone.

Sumo Wrestler 

Favorite TV Station: Nature documentary 

This game is the real beginning of these specialty customers. The Sumo Wrestler orders two cakes, 1 at a time, and it takes time for him to get mad. A real money making customer

Doctor

Favorite TV station: Nature documentary 

Kid w/ Floatie

Favorite TV station: Concert

He is an improvement by a factor of 10,000 compared to the kids from the last game. 

Me in the Future

Favorite TV station: Astrology report 

Grandma with baby

Favorite TV Station: Nature Documentary

Hazmat Suit

Favorite TV Station: News

Alien/Secret Human

Favorite TV Station: Concert

Real Alien

Favorite TV Station: Astrology report 

 ET is going to be at the very bottom of the normal people (is that the right term to use) only because every time the TV is on it gets changed to the astrology channel--all thanks to this extraterrestrial!! 

Horrible

You know what it is. These are the types of customers people get their phones out to film.

Astronaut

Favorite TV Station: News 

She comes into the establishment with a total of two hearts. Enough said

The Sad Sack (Penguin Edition)

Favorite TV Station: Nature documentary 

Another classic customer returning, this time in a penguin suit. He must have an interesting closet at home. 

Antarctic Zoologist 

Favorite TV Station: Nature documentary 

This guy is such a little bitch and I don’t know why. If you decided to stop your field work to wait in a line for some cake you probably weren’t observing anything that important. This motherfucker was probably out there collecting water samples to determine the extent of pollution present in the Antarctic waters, but is acting like he is close to missing out on observing a solitary animal that never comes out. Gimme a break. 

Flop Actor

Favorite TV Station: Concert 

It is not stated in-game that he is a flop, but I’m going to say he is because I don’t like him. The typical customer that acts like their life is gonna end because their three-tier cake with a topping is not given to them in 2 seconds. Why don’t you put your skills to action and try acting patient, buddy? 

Socialite

Favorite TV Station: Astrology report 

This specimen gets the honor of being the first customer of going ballistic on me. In Cake Mania, I had to wait until I was well into the Beach levels to reach this milestone, but this time around I only had to wait until I got to the third level overall. What I do find interesting though is that she actually has a positive effect on a select few customers. I have noticed the surgeon, flop actor, and cake maniac all gain a heart if she comes into the bakery. It also doesn’t happen all the time, I noticed that it happens if she pops up next to them. I suppose I have to give her points for being helpful sometimes. 

Queen (the real HBIC) 

Favorite TV Station: News 

 What I wanna know is, why is supposed royalty waiting in line with all the other plebs instead of sending out an underling they have on deck, and if they do want to grace us with their presence--why the hell do they think they get special treatment in the form of having cakes made in hyperspeed?? You are a mere mortal, you aren’t even a cool alien. I have to say I do like the character design of her, she’s really pretty. 

.......Now it is time for some choice screenshots!

Usually I would be too engrossed in trying to finish the routes to notice the beginning and ending messages for the different levels, but occasionally they would catch my attention. I need to pay more attention to what Jill says because she is funny as fuck.

Oof. Well, I can tell you that this was not the route towards the proposal ending. 

 My Opinion

My opinion of this game is currently clouded because I just got done replaying this game six fucking times, however I am going to try to remove my rage-goggles and type a review with a clear mind. Yeah I know I did this to myself. 

There is replay value with this game with the different routes and endings, but I do have a bone to pick with how they presented this. 

The way CM2 is presented is that you either play “endless game” or play “story mode.” If you play story mode and get an ending, the trophy that you get from the ending ends up somewhere on the main screen which is cute or whateva. However, if you want to replay the game to get a different ending, you’ll basically have to start over by clicking “start new game” since you don’t have the option to save your current progress in a game slot (yep, they don’t have that for this game despite it being an option for Cake Mania). You also don’t have the option to keep track of all the trophies you earned, because once you restart the game to start on a new route it is gone. This might be petty of me, but I want to see all the trophies I have won, damn it! 

The various plots you can discover are fine. Some of the endings were okay, like the BFFs forever or proposal ending but I personally really enjoyed Wildlife Conservation Icon Jill and Intergalactic Symbol of Peace Jill endings. They are ridiculous, but so fun to unlock

The customers are either completely unremarkable or they have something in them to make gameplay a little less monotonous. I think this is an improvement from the first game since I really wasn’t able to notice anything special besides patient and impatient. While it still hasn’t reached the threshold of kooky that I like in Cake Mania games, I would say this is a good calm before the storm of Cake Mania 3 and beyond.

This game feels unremarkable because the changes between this and Cake Mania are minor, however in a way I think this is a good bridge between Cake Mania and Cake Mania 3 and beyond. The choose-your-adventure part is a nice addition, but it didn’t feel fully satisfying because we aren’t able to see the fruit(cake) of our labor.

I give this game a Not Awful Electric Boogaloo/10

ETA: I talked with another cake maniac and they told me how to get the trophies all in one place. You can essentially just go to the different locations on the map of the game once you finished that level after you are done with one playthrough of the game, go to the cutscreen option available and pick alternate routes. Eventually, you can end up with all the trophies on the main screen. Problem solved!

[irrelevantnostalgia]

[irrelevantnostalgia]

[irrelevantnostalgia]

1. Cake Mania (2006)

Overall Plot: Jill’s grandparents ran Evans’ bakery for many years, until Jill returned from college to see a corporation called Megamart  buying out the property from the landlord. Jill’s objective in this game is to save Evans’ bakery by running her own bakery operation through 4 different locations (Home Kitchen, Beach, Circus, and Casino), until she has enough funds to buy back Evans’ bakery.

Home Kitchen

Beach

Circus

Casino

Each location that Jill goes to in her journey has 12 levels, each representing one month (which would mean it took Jill 4 years to get the bakery back). The clock in the top right of the level  is a timer for the level, and doesn’t necessarily have to strike 12 for the level to end. For each level, you have to reach the “baker’s goal” which is the minimum amount of profit you need to make to proceed to the next level.

This is the game that started it all. It is easy to play, but the excitement for me is not only the speed of the game once you get to it, but also the strategy. While the later games are much more flashy in every respect, the simplicity of this game makes for a fun challenge. You have to purchase upgrades strategically and there is a narrow window to get it right. As the game goes on, the patience of these customers decreases by a lot. Some customers will remain patient and you are able to keep them waiting for a bit, while others are ready to blow a gasket after 10 seconds and not even all the distraction cupcakes in the world can keep them at bay.

 Eventually, you will reach the DEMONIC LEVEL where you will be able to either effectively handle the demands of only the most irritable customers, or you will have to face the consequences of your poor decision making skills for the upgrades. I don’t know if there is a universal DEMONIC LEVEL, but I have noticed there is one that comes up fairly often as the level many players need help beating (that level being Casino - February). To understand what we are working with, here are the customers of Cake Mania:

Tier 1: Saints of Patience

These customers have consistently demonstrated that they are able to endure long stretches of time without throwing a tantrum. They are able to withstand your shoddy beginner equipment and remain cool as a cucumber as the cakes got taller and more elaborate, and the pace of the game speeds up. If a heaven exists, these customers will see it.

Delivery Man

First Appearance: Home Kitchen - January 

Favorite TV station: News

Cake Topping: Tradewinds (obligate)

Delivery man is just a simple dude looking for some simple cakes. From the Home Kitchen-Beach levels he will only order a 1T (one tier) cake with no topping, even if you buy his favorite topping early on. Once you reach the Circus levels he’ll start ordering 1T cake + topping cakes. The best type of customer to have during a rush since he essentially gives you a break.

Old lady

First appearance: Home Kitchen - May 

Favorite TV Station: Cooking show

Cake Topping: Grandma (facultative)

Old lady gets introduced as one of Grandma Evans’ friends from the windsurfing club (May-HK starting message). She is a topping lover that can order cakes with a variety of toppings before you purchase her preferred topping. Her cake preferences do change depending on the location, as she ordered 2T (two-tier) cakes with no topping in the Circus levels and then 2T cake + topping in the Casino levels. Regardless, she will help you make $$$$. Has a DEMONIC counterpart.

College Friend

First appearance: Home Kitchen - August 

Favorite TV Station: Cooking show

Cake Topping: Strawberry (facultative)

Is confirmed to be a college friend of Jill’s. Is said to “have a lot of time to wait” and “not enough money for tips” (August-HK intro message). College Friend is one of the customers that is given an introductory description that you think would have an impact on the gameplay (besides customer patience), and I wanted to test this so I did an experiment to see if the tip thing is true by comparing her order to a similar order by different customers, and it is not true.  She is another customer whose cake preferences vary depending on the location, as she did 1T cake + topping during Home Kitchen, 2T cake no topping during Circus, and 1T cake + topping again during Casino. Has a DEMONIC counterpart.

Dracula

First appearance: Home Kitchen - October 

Favorite TV Station: Cooking show

Cake Topping: Rose (obligate)

Another patient, $$$$-making customer, as he prefers to order 2T cakes + topping. Jill claims that Dracula should be served first due to his presence having a “drowsy effect on the other folks in line” in the October-HK intro message. However, I did not notice impatience acceleration in any of the customers when the vampire arrived. This, however, is foreshadowing to the types of customers that will appear in subsequent games.

Santa

First appearance: Home Kitchen - December 

Favorite TV Station: Cartoons

Cake Topping: Snail Mail (facultative)

Similar to claims about Dracula’s effect on customers, Jill claims in the December-HK intro message that Santa Claus has a positive effect on the customers. Like with Dracula, I didn’t notice anything significantly different in the customers. Would have been a nice thing to have in certain levels though. What is nice about Santa, especially in the later levels, is that he mostly orders 1T cakes which gives you a break.

~Tier 2: A Flawed Mortal~

These two customers are a fine line between the role models of proper customer behavior above and the Satans, Lucifers, Shaytans, and Beezlebubs down below. The game does present an impatient/patient customer dichotomy, which is especially present in the Casino levels and would make the need for this tier unnecessary. However, the tiers I am proposing are based off what the game is trying to push about the customer and my own personal experience playing the game, and I think there is some nuance with these two customers.

Businessman

First appearance: Home Kitchen - June

Favorite TV station: News

Cake topping: Candle (obligate)

Trivia: Grandpa took Jill to a Business Association Meeting and they met this businessman there. Is said to be an impatient customer according to the June-HK intro message. So here is the deal-- he is most likely classified as impatient because he runs through patience much quicker than the customers in the tier above, however, he is much easier to handle than the tier below because he typically orders 1T cakes + topping. The only exception to this order were the Circus levels where he ordered 2T cakes w/ no topping. In my experience, he is one of those customers whose impatience will be felt if you are in the awkward stages of upgrading your snail-speed ovens and frosters while also having every other customer want a 2T cake, which is what I felt during the Circus levels. It really wasn’t too egregious in the Circus levels either, and putting on his favorite TV channel and giving him distraction cupcakes if needed helped a lot. In the Casino levels he was actually fairly patient. He is another $$$$-maker customer because he tips quite generously. Another reason why I had to create this tier is because he has a DEMONIC counterpart that is much, much more impatient.

Food Critic 

First appearance November - Home Kitchen. 

Favorite TV Station: Cooking show

Cake topping: Rose (obligate)

Trivia: It is suggested that in-universe her critiques are powerful enough to reduce the profit of a business if it is not favorable and that she is “finnicky” (November - HK intro message). Essentially, she is going to be an impatient customer. A lot of what I said about the businessman applies to her as well. She is reliable regarding the types of cake that she orders (throughout the entire game it was 2T with a rose topping), she goes through patience much quicker than other customers, and how egregious her behavior is depends on how elaborate everyone else is and how good/bad your current equipment is. Unlike the businessman, her impatience is worse during the Casino levels.

Tier 3: Disgusting 

Every retail worker’s nightmare resides in this tier. 

Cupid

First appearance: Home Kitchen - February 

Favorite TV station: Cartoons

Cake topping: Snail mail (facultative)

Okay, let’s get into this little shit. Every time you enter the February level in each location, Jill has to give you some spiel about how busy and in a rush Cupid is. Okay, fine. You won’t feel the heat in the literal second level of the game, nor will he be all that bad in the beach levels. In the Circus levels, however, is when the temper tantrums start piling up a little bit. It won’t be easy to manage because there is another customer who is a massive crybaby and makes playing the game annoying as fuck, but it is fine because you can distract both of them with the same TV channel (they don’t stay happy for long, but I suppose it is better than nothing). The February - Casino level is where it all goes to hell. Cupid will shit his diaper in anger if you don’t get him his cake in .0000000009 picoseconds after you hand him the menu, and the only saving grace is that he has a fairly simple order of 1T + topping. You can hand this ungrateful twit a distraction cupcake AND turn on his favorite TV channel in an attempt to increase his patience and, I shit you not, whatever progress you gained with that immediately goes away because he is just that impatient. He is maybe 75% of the reason Casino - February is where a lot of players get stuck on. 

Easter Bunny

First appearance: Home Kitchen - April

Favorite TV station: Cartoons

Cake topping:  Snail mail (facultative)

Trivia: Jill claims that he hates being called cute in the April - HK closing message. I’m not sure if this sad sack actually deals with this problem, or he just claims he deals with this as some kind of reverse psychology trick to get people into calling him cute. Regardless, he is just a bland version of Cupid since he isn’t radioactive enough to ruin an entire level but still displays abominable customer behavior. 

Businessman (vacay)

First appearance: Beach - January

Favorite TV Station: News

Cake topping: Candle (obligate)

Old Lady (vacay)

First appearance: Beach - March

Favorite TV Station: Cooking show

Cake topping: Grandma (facultative)

These are the DEMONIC counterparts to the previously established Businessman and Old Lady customers. I’ve decided to combine them together, because they function similarly. In the Beach levels where they are introduced they can be managed fairly well, and it is the Casino levels where they fly off the handle at a moment’s notice. The whole premise behind this behavior shift is that since they are on vacation they cannot be bothered to wait in lines. Gimme a fucking break.

Bridezilla (this is also what the game calls her)

First appearance: Beach - May

Favorite TV Station: Cooking show

Cake topping: Wedding (facultative--I think)

Bridezilla has a special place in my heart because she is the first customer to go bonkers on me in this playthrough. I even timed a second bridezilla from the time I handed her the menu to when she went bonkers--43 seconds. To be fair, at this point in the playthrough I didn’t have any fully upgraded equipment and she orders 2T cakes + topping. Her behavior only gets worse from here and I do consider her to be more impatient than the vacation demons above, but I suppose I could see why she is impatient. However, it is still poor planning on her part since she clearly ordered her cake last minute since it looks like she had to show up fresh from the altar to pick it up. Not my problem (except it is because if I don’t kowtow to this moron I lose on a good deal of profit). 

Little Kid

First appearance: Home Kitchen - July

Favorite TV station: Cartoons

Cake topping: Slyder (facultative)

Ohhhhhh my fucking God I hate this kid. THIS is the specimen mentioned under Cupid’s description that I dreaded seeing during the Circus levels. Everyone in this tier is annoying as fuck, but there is something infuriating about seeing this twerp order a 1T cake + topping, which is a fairly simple order and thus will not have a whole lot of wait time, and have the audacity to cry, shit, and puke after maybe .005 seconds of waiting. Mind you, I had one set of fully upgraded equipment by the Circus levels which is sufficient enough to handle his order in a timely manner! Just like Cupid in the DEMONIC LEVEL, you could throw every bit of distraction at him and he will still zoom through his patience. It was especially bad in the Circus levels because he showed up almost every single fucking month and he basically behaved very close to Cupid. Any pro-life individual will change their stance after seeing him in action and will want to perform a 120 month abortion.

A lot of these descriptions are partially incomprehensible due to the fact I didn’t go far enough into gameplay before diving right into complaining. You start off the game with one green snail oven and froster. It won’t seem that bad in the beginning of the game, especially when the customers are still relatively calm but it gets annoying to deal with pretty soon. It is super easy to want to increase the amount of ovens you have, but you can handle most of this game with one oven+froster. I didn’t even bother with a second oven+froster until the Circus levels in preparation for the DEMONIC LEVEL. 

What you will want to do ASAP is purchasing the cake toppings. Even the cheapest cake topping can get an extra ~$10 added to the cake, and once you really get into the game you can be making at least $100 more than what the Baker’s Goal requires. 

In terms of distractions, I personally didn’t start purchasing the microwave with the distraction cupcakes or the TV until near the end of the Home Kitchen/early Beach levels because early on in the game the cuckoo customers are not that bad and you want to have a decent money-making strategy early on. For comparison, the TV is $1000 while the cheapest topping to purchase (candle) is only $400. 

So the DEMONIC LEVEL. I’m sure you can infer what this level is all about. I would say that Casino levels are overall very DEMONIC not only because of  Cupid, but the main whining and crying that occurs due to this is that fact that it is where the worst of the worst customers get flanderized and you have to navigate the levels flawlessly, which is gonna be impossible with dusty equipment. The game is so unsubtle about this as well, as this is the set up of every Casino level:

Two patient and two impatient customers. In some levels you will actually have 3 impatient/1 patient *shudders*. Besides just having fast equipment, you can also serve 4 customers at a time and not pick up the money the previous customers leave until you are finished with the current set (in later games they make his more difficult to do lmao enjoy this strategy while you can). 

Also this game has lives. The later ones don’t so you can take Ls to your heart’s content, and I think “lives” for this is kinda goofy. Sometimes you just fucked up one order and didn’t meet the goal, and sometimes if you realllly fucked up (i.e. didn’t upgrade your equipment properly) you would have to start over anyways lmao. 

After everything, I still beat all the levels and Jill saved the day <3

I give this game a Perfect Nostalgia/10