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Shallow, repetitive, and hardly any fun at all

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 14 / 24
Date: June 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Cake Mania isn't the first flash game to find itself on the DS, nor the first game to feature a look at the culinary arts. Regardless of either fact, Cake Mania is a game that is shallow, repetitive, and overall not very fun. Playing as a girl named Jill, your mission is to run your bakery and perform tasks such as baking, serving the orders of customers, and the like. All this is done by tapping the touch screen with the stylus when various icons appear. It sounds easy, but Cake Mania features a startling level of difficulty that may surprise those who had blasts of fun with Cooking Mama. Not to mention that the sheer monotony of it all weighs in more frustration than anything else, which kills what could have been a fun concept. The game looks good with bright and colorful graphics and animations, and the game features a bargain price tag to boot, but with the repetitive and shallow gameplay, and zilch in terms of multiplayer features as well (which actually would have been welcome here), Cake Mania just isn't worth the headaches. All in all, fans of games like Cooking Mama and such may want to give Cake Mania a look, but don't say you weren't warned.

PC game is Better

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: May 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I love Cake Mania in PC game, that is why I bought this for my NDS. Unfortunately, this isn't fun at all. Small screen and hard to control compare to PC game. Very disappointed!

Fun... in the beginning

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 16, 2008
Author: Amazon User

When I bought this game, I thought that it would be fun. It was, but only for the first 5 levels. You play as Jill and you try to run a bakery. It's harder than it looks. The different colors of icing are very close together, so it is possible that you may pick the wrong color. That will ruin the cake, unless you put it on display and somebody wants it, but that does not happen very often. The same thing happens with the decoration. As you progress, you get people that seem to wait about a minute, and then they leave. You have to be fast in order to succeed. Later, you have to make two layered cakes, which is even harder. Baking and putting on decorations and icing takes forever until you buy a better machine to do it. The new machines cost a lot of money in the game, so until you buy a better one, you're stuck with the slow ones.

The Nintendo DS version of Cake Mania is really bad and no fun at all. Take my advice. Only buy the Nintendo DS version of Cake Mania if you really must. I suggest that you play the computer version, which is much better. I don't plan on keeping my copy of this game, so I will probably be selling it to one of those places that will buy used games. Over all, I am very disappointed with this game, and I do not recommend the DS version to anybody.

Fun but very frustrating

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: April 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is definitely not a relaxing game to play. There are many things to juggle and a lot to keep track of. I actually tell my husband when I'm going to play just so he won't talk to me otherwise he'll break my concentration. The frustration comes into play most when frosting a cake. The frosting icons are small enough so that when you mean to hit one with your stylus you can actually wind up hitting another and that ruins a cake. There seems to be very little room for error in this game. For the $20 cost it's probably worth getting and you won't feel so bad if you decide to stop playing due to the high stress level the game creates.

Don't expect it to be exactly like the computer game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: June 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I initially got hooked on Cake Mania when playing it at Yahoo games and when it was available for Nintendo DS, I was so excited that I pre-ordered the game. When I finally got it a few weeks later, I was pretty disappointed as it wasn't as fun as playing it on the computer. First of all, because the screen is so small, whenever Jill moves from one end of the kitchen to another, the screen moves with it causing me to hit the wrong frosting color/cake shape/cake topping icon. Secondly, I think there's a bug in the program because the game will crash in the middle of a session or it'll fail to recognize that I picked up the cash for a customer, leaving the spot filled.

All in all, this is a fun game (hence the 3 stars) but you'll be sorely disappointed if you expect it to be an exact replica of the computer game.

its ok

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: May 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

the online version is easier to play with. i may not be use to using the ds lite to play this game.

Culinary Chaos! (spolier warning)

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 21 / 25
Date: May 16, 2007
Author: Amazon User

You play as Jill, you are trying to raise enough money to help your grandparents buy back their bakery before the evil new mega mart on the block runs them out of business for good. Despite the fact that you are basically doing the same thing over and over, you are having so much fun you don't really care. Customers order cakes, you take their order, bake it, frost it, and give it a design if necessary, then collect your money and on to the next customer, its that simple. There really isn't much else to the game, yet as another reviewer says there is hardly room for error in this game. It starts off simple but eventually more customers file in at at a faster rate, the cakes get more complex, and meanwhile customers lose patience.

But to counter this you can use your money to buy more ovens, frosters, etc You can also upgrade the equipment you already have to run a more efficient kitchen. You can even buy products to settle down customers so they won't storm off and cost you money. For example, customers will have more patience if you give them free samples of cupcakes.

From a technical standpoint, the main problems I had was that some of the cake topper icons were small and too close together so if you picked the wrong one you were stuck with a cake no one wanted costing you money (unless someone came in and bought it later). Also, I had a problem with the Halloween two layer cakes at first because the Jack O' Lantern and Rectangular shapes looked so similar it was hard to tell what shape was at the bottom. I ended up making the wrong cake a few times, costing me money.

The game comes with the expansion pack CAKE MANIA: BAKE TO THE BAKERY. This is unlocked after you beat Cake Mania. The storyline is different but it is basically the same thing just harder. The customers order more complex cakes and come into the store faster etc. This is really a great game for the price, but if you don't like repetitive games and like diverse gameplay it is not for you. Like one person already said, the challenge is in the constant multi-tasking.

Superly Duperly Fun and Kinda Hard

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: July 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I really like it, but it's kinda hard. It might just be my screen, but sometimes when I press something, it dosen't work. And some times I just get frustrated with it.

An addicting slice of fun!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: September 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have played this game online and really liked it. When I found out that it was available for the DS, I bought it straight away. I have beaten the game several times in the 3 months I have had it, yet something keeps bringing me back! Cake Mania lends itself well to the DS touch screen, and frankly, it is very addicting! Even my husband, who has a short attentions span when it comes to video games, and prefers the shoot-em-up variety anyways, has had a blast with this one. Wonderful for kids and adults alike. The graphics are not especially pristine - it is a simple game after all, but the replay-ability definitely makes it worthwhile. Enjoy!

Like a hamster on a wheel...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 18, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I feel pretty silly for all the time I've spent on this game. I can't disagree with reviews that say the game is mindless and repetitive but I'm hooked. I first played Cake Mania online, but had to give it up because I was going blind and developing carpel tunnel. When I got my DS though I couldn't resist getting it to balance out my more cerebral games. Everything about Cake Mania is tedious and repetitive, it doesn't require much beyond really good hand-eye coordination and fast reflexes.

The dynamic of baking the cakes is very simple, you simply have to press the right size shape and color to correspond to the cake your customer wants. Different customers have different temperaments and tipping abilities - so you have to take that into account when you've got four different people waiting in line.

There is some strategy involved, I've beaten both Cake Mania and Back to the Bakery (expansion pack) and I can say that they are slightly different. The strategic part of the game is deciding what upgrades to make to your bakery and in what order. You can buy more and faster ovens, frosting stations, decorations, and shoes. To entertain and pacify impatient customers you can buy a t.v. or a microwave to make complimentary cupcakes. I've learned that you can't just buy things haphazardly, you have to have a plan. In Cake Mania it seemed that it was more important to turn cakes out fast rather than fancy, so the quantity and quality of baking and frosting stations got upgraded faster than the decorations (all of which was after maxing out the shoe upgrades - which make you move faster). In Back to the Bakery it was the opposite, fancier cakes were more important earlier on than speed -- though that came later. In both games the t.v. was eventually required though the microwave wasn't needed in Back to the Bakery.

In both games you meet the same cast of characters, though in Back to the Bakery you never change locations, your bakery just gets a little fancier--but I hardly noticed it. No the game isn't terribly imaginative, the music, graphics, plot, etc... are all pretty simple and like I said, it is tedious and redundant throughout. I can't wait for the sequel...

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