I've got Cake Mania! (Cake Mania (PC))

Member Name: katykicker

Product:	Cake Mania (PC)
Date:	15/05/09 (18 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Addictive gameplay, lots of rounds to play, lots of upgrades & different features.

Disadvantages: Some of the latter rounds were extremely difficult.

Cake Mania is a strategy came that is available to purchase on disc (see ebay for the best prices) or as a download from numerous websites (including pogo.co.uk).

When playing Cake Mania you take on the role of Jill who is inspired by her grandparents in to baking and Jill goes off to cooking school, on her return Jill opens a small bakery and then this is where the game begins for you as you attempt to work your way through miscellaneous levels to build up money and also get to work in bigger & better bakeries. Jills' ultimate aim is to make enough money from her business to enable herself to purchase her grandparents old bakery back.

The aim of the game is to successfully manage your time in order to prepare, bake & sell as many cakes to customers in your shop as possible in an allotted time in order to pass a set challenge that has been offered to you at the start of the round.

While working through the rounds there will be different customers who arrive and each of them has a varying amount of patience before they get fed up and leave the bakery. Also, each customer will be more or less generous with tips depending on how fast they are served & how well entertained they are.

Jill (you) can purchase lots of additional items with money earnt and use this to purchase extra ovens, frosting machines, a cupcake microwave, a TV, faster shoes for Jill and some of these items you can purchase a couple of so that you can have 2 or 3 ovens cooking different cakes at the same time.

As the rounds proceed the demands of the customers get harder; they may want a different combination of cakes or flavours and you will need to have several ovens to make the cakes fast enough to stop yourself from losing customers.

This game has hours of good gameplay in it and it's one that I thoroughly enjoyed time & time again. I did find that towards the end rounds I reached a point where I just could not get past a set round for quite a few tries and I left playing it for quite a few weeks as I was just so frustrated, however, when I came back to the game I managed to pass it fairly quick and then continue with the game.

I have a 9 year old niece and she would adore a game like this as she is at the age where she is enjoying time management & strategy games so this would be perfect for the younger generation too as it has no obscene images, bad language etc and although it might be a little bit high to purchase the DS version of this I have seen this online/PC version available for between £5 and £10 on various websites so it is worth keeping your eyes peeled for a bargain.

I have returned to this game a number of times over the past few years and I always find something to enjoy about it and I just love to try and predict what cakes the customers are going to request and then be proven wrong! It's a fantastic game & I am rating it 4/5 and have knocked off one point because towards the end it got extremely hard & I think that younger people would struggle with this.

Summary: A fantastic time management game with a great strategy.