If there was ever a poll to discover the king of foods, my vote would be cake. Think about it - cake is a pure indulgence, purposefully created to hit all the pleasure spots in your brain.
And yet it’s very much a food of the people. Anyone can knock together a decent cake with some eggs, sugar, flour, butter and water. Also, cake can be eaten at any time of day and for any occasion - late morning with a cup of tea, long after dinner with a cup of coffee, at weddings, funerals, office meetings…
All of which has made me very hungry, and leads onto the real point of this ramble - Cake Mania: Celebrity Chef: it’s a game about cake. Or more specifically, a game about making and selling cakes as quickly and efficiently as possible.
This being the third mobile game in a popular series, it won’t surprise you to learn that the core gameplay remains virtually unchanged. You, as Jill, must take orders for delicious cakes and go through the procedure of making them by cueing up each stage - baking the base, adding the frosting, handing it over and taking the money.
Things are complicated when multiple customers, each with different habits (some are less patient than others, but tip higher) stack up, requiring you to multitask. If you’ve played Diner Dash or one of its many variants, you’ll know exactly what to expect.
Unlike the second game, Celebrity Chef makes a few minor attempts to improve the recipe. Firstly, there’s the reality show storyline, which places you into direct competition with a host of competitors to become the Master Baker (or something).
Then there’s the addition of between-round mini-games, which require you to stack, catch or distribute cakes within a set period. None of these elements are particularly noteworthy on their own, but they do add a pleasingly thick layer of icing onto an already tasty cake.
While Cake Mania: Celebrity Chef adds precious little to a fairly over-saturated genre, its tight gameplay, colourful graphics and satisfying length ensure that it stands up to most of its rivals.
The question is, if you’ve overindulged on such titles in the past, does the thought of another slice turn your stomach?
Cake Mania: Celebrity Chef
Although Cake Mania 3 contains nothing that we haven’t seen many times before, it is a polished and sizeable example of the multi-tasking sub-genre
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.