We all love cake, right? What about stack-em games? Well, what if someone came along and smashed them all together? Steady yourselves as Square Heads Games and Grimtalin have done just that. Ladies and Gentlemen, please allow me to introduce yourselves this Cake Laboratory review; read on to see if this sugary overload is a piece of cake or just a bit of stomach ache.

 

 

Platform: Nintendo Switch

Publisher: Grimtalin

Developer: Square Heads Games

Release Date: December 20th, 2018

Price: $2.99

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Gameplay

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Now, let me be honest from the beginning, I’m not normally one for a sickly sweet puzzle/stack game. I’m normally a gun in hand/blow stuff up kind of guy but as in every other review, I went into this one with my eyes open and willing to give it a go. I was pleasantly surprised from the beginning, it’s a stacker game with a sugary sweet twist, and everyone loves cake and here you don’t get told off for playing with your food… How awesome is that?

Getting into the game, it quickly feels pretty easy as you fly through the first few levels with no major drama. But just hold on to that thought as your towers start to crumble and your cockiness soon melts away; don’t be fooled, this game has a mega hard underlying theme that grabs you by the whatsits without you knowing.

The aim of the game is simple enough: you drop your cake from the top of the screen to the plate below… sounds easy enough, right? Well, add to the mix the moving hands you drop from and now you need the precision of a top surgeon to drop your cakes in perfect stacks. I’d love to say I did that every time but mine were somewhat abstract to say the least.

Luckily enough for me, as long as your cakes hold on for dear life you pass, at times this is touch and go leaving you holding your breath until the cherry gets put aloft your creation marking the successful passing of the level. You have many different cakes to stack on top of each other unlocking more as you go through levels and you even get to make your own creations adding to the fun factor , you get to choose from big extra tasty looking cakes right down to small thinner mini treats, all of the cakes stack on top in randomly selected choices so all different sizes stack on top of each other making the difficulty next level.

The variety of the levels, unfortunately, isn’t there and each level looks pretty much the same nothing seems to change when the level changes, as you move through the levels the towers need to be taller and this can be quite difficult however I found you had a few lives to use up but after that you could continue from the beginning of that level so at least you’re not back at the start every five minutes. One thing I would’ve like to have seen is once your stack gets high enough and if not level enough it would have been cool if it started to sway a bit making things a bit more tricky as I found with the stack staying still sometimes it can be a bit easy. Cake Laboratory is a very addictive game and I am yet to play just one level as it most definitely has the “just one more” feeling to it and is also great fun for the family as all my family enjoyed the game. One slight (and I mean only slight) disappointing factor is the game seems to just finish, when I reached level 50 I thought you would then move to another world or level but after you defeat the last level that is the end of the game but to be honest it is a game that I could see myself going back to time and time again. Cake Laboratory is most definitely a winner for me the gameplay is simple enough for all the family but also challenging enough for seasoned gamers it has everything for me that a Switch game should have good all round fun…. and it has cake and lots of it.

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Graphics and Sound

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The graphics are surprisingly good and the detail is spot on and looks very pleasing on the eye just make sure you’ve eaten before you play or you could end up trying to eat the Switch as the cakes do look very tasty. The soundtrack is ok the music is like supermarket background music but in a way it fits, I mean you couldn’t really stack cakes to a heavy metal soundtrack really. The sound effects are great quite a therapeutic splat sound when you land your cake.

 

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Summary

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To summarise my thoughts on Cake Laboratory, I simply loved the game, it was great fun to play throughout, it had some slight flaws but overall it was enjoyable and well worth the punt for $2.99. It’s perfect to take on a commute or if you were going on holiday. So for me, it’s a definite buy, you won’t regret it.