Game Review: Lemon Cake

LEMON CAKE
Developer: Cozy Bee Games
Publisher: Cozy Bee Games
Release Date: 18 February 2021
Genre: Baking Simulator/Resource Management
Platform: Steam
RRP: $21.50 AUS

 

Restore an abandoned bakery and prepare pastries from farm to table! Grow fresh ingredients in the greenhouse, cook pastries & sweets in the kitchen and serve your baked goods to hungry customers in your own shop!

Lemon Cake is a resource management game where you run a cute bakery with the goal to restore the bakery and earn enough experience to make the old owner’s famous lemon cake. The old owner hangs around as a ghost to guide you. To gain experience, you run the bakery from day to day, unlocking recipes and making delicious looking treats from the items you harvest from your own greenhouse, delivering them to customers and cleaning up after them, all while ensuring the fire in the oven doesn’t go out. You even have little cow for milk and chickens for eggs! The whole thing is completely adorable.

I found the gamplay a bit of a struggle at first. Although I’m mostly a Nintendo gamer, I have previously played on PC, but it was mostly mouse-click based games. In Lemon Cake, I was using the arrow pad to move around the bakery and hitting numbers to decide which ingredient to select. It took a while for me to get the hang of it, but pretty soon I could do it without looking.

The soundtrack is adorable with a soothing night time song and one that is a little more upbeat for peak hour. After a while playing the game, it got a bit repetitive, but that’s OK because this whole game was created by one dev. It’s still a really nice soundtrack that completely fits with the aesthetic.

Speaking of aesthetic, this game is just adorable. The graphics are smooth with rounded looks for the characters which reminded me a little of the chibi vibes from Animal Crossing. You can adopt pets and dedicate part of your space to a cat cafe to adopt out kitties needing homes. The ingredients are easily identified with bright colours. The only thing that is a bit weird is customers can order an entire red velvet cake and then eat the entire thing in three bites. It’s funny more than weird. Some of the food looks so good I want to eat it myself.

With the constant pressure of customer orders, the countdown timer of their impatience and threat of leaving unsatisfied, and my own inherent need to please, sometimes I found it a bit stressful! I would have to take time out at the end of the game day to decompress. However the gorgeous graphics, soothing soundtrack, and repetitive grinding nature leads me to believe this is indeed a low-stakes cozy game.

I definitely recommend this game. It’s also coming to Switch and other consoles real soon!

All video games are purchased by myself or received as a gift.

Nemo
Nemo

About Nemo

A lover of kittens and all things sparkly, Nemo has a degree in English Literature and specialises in reviewing contemporary, paranormal, mystery/thriller, historical, sci-fi and fantasy Young Adult fiction. She is especially drawn to novels about princesses, strong female friendships, magical powers, and assassins.

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