Cake Mania is a cooking time management video game developed and published by Sandlot Games in 2006. Some ports of Cake Mania have different titles; the Wii version is known as Cake Mania: In the Mix!, and the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable versions are titled Cake Mania: Bakers Challenge. Cake Mania received mixed reviews from critics, with some reviewers praising the game's 'addictive' and 'simple' casual gameplay, while others criticized this as being 'repetitive' and 'shallow'.
Plot
Jill Evans, who was inspired by her baker grandparents, developed a love for pastry cooking and went to a culinary school. When Jill comes back from culinary school, she finds her grandparents' bakery, Evans' Bakery, closed. Jill decides to open her own bakery and work her way up the business ladder so she can buy back her grandparents' bakery. She also learns how to deal with some very tricky customers along the way. In Cake Mania: Back to the Bakery, Jill tries to win her grandparents a Hawaiian cruise vacation while renovating the bakery.
Gameplay
The player controls Jill, a baker. Customers come in and line up, giving Jill their orders. The player must then direct Jill to create the cake each customer wants, before the customer becomes tired of waiting and leaves, whereupon Jill loses a life. If Jill runs out of lives, the player loses the level and must try again from the most recent checkpoint. Cakes in Cake Mania are created using the oven and the frosting machine; the cake has to be a specific shape and have a certain color of icing for each order. If the wrong cake is made the player can throw it away. In later levels, cakes are more complex to make, such as orders requiring several layers of cake and extra cake decorations. Different customers have different gameplay quirks (such as preferring a certain feature on their cakes) and differing levels of patience, and Jill can use purchasable items such as cupcakes and a television to help keep her customers patient while they wait. Each level takes place in a different month, and holiday-themed customers appear such as Cupid and Santa Claus in February and December, respectively. Virtual money earned in the game can be used to buy additional baking equipment such as a second oven, better frosting machine, cupcake microwave, or faster shoes to make Jill move faster.
Version differences
Both the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable versions of Cake Mania: Bakers Challenge and the Nintendo DS version of Cake Mania include features from Cake Mania: Back to the Bakery, which was released as an expansion on PC and Java ME-supported phones. The original PC game has 48 stages, and 84 with the expansion. The Wii version of Cake Mania: In the Mix! has a co-op multiplayer mode, an endless mode, a cake frosting minigame, the ability to run a catering business, and advertise in the newspaper. Cake Mania: Bakers Challenge has an endless mode, as well as the "Baker's Challenge" mode, wherein items in Jill's kitchen, customers, and the business hours may be adjusted.
Development
Cake Mania was developed in St. Petersburg, Russia by Sandlot Games. Cake Mania was originally released on PC as a browser-based flash game version accessible for free on sites such as MSN Games, Big Fish Games, and RealArcade; it was the most downloaded PC game of 2006, with 55 million downloads. While Cake Mania could be played for free in browsers, the browser version is a demo that lacks all the levels and features of the full version, such as the ability to buy upgrades. The sites hosting the game, such as MSN Games, also sold the full release of the game, which could then be downloaded. In addendum to charging for the full release, Cake Mania was also supported by browser-based advertising.
The Nintendo DS port was developed by Digital Embryo and published by Majesco Entertainment (US) and Eidos Interactive (Europe), and was first exhibited at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show. Cake Mania was released on DS on April 9, 2007 in the United States as a budget title. The Wii version titled Cake Mania: In the Mix! was released in November 2008 in the US, The Europe/PAL release of In the Mix! was developed by Gorilla Systems and published by Codemasters and was released in early 2009.