Fresh from the oven is Cake Mania 3, released last weekend by Sandlot Games. When a game has reached its third instalment you know it has to be good, because enough people have clamored for more. And the long and short of this review is: if you loved the first two Cake Mania games, you’ll love this one! (But if you’re new to the series, like me, you may find some things still lacking.)

In Cake Mania 3, Jill returns as the heroine who, on the eve of her wedding to Jack, accidentally breaks something called a Time Bender and is hurled back in time along with 5 relatives. With each relative teleported to a different time (from prehistoric Earth to the French revolution), you need to save each person in order to make it back to your wedding. The only way to do this is to open shop and bake some cakes.

Yes, the story is implausible, but such is the humor of Cake Mania: dinosaurs eat cakes just like humans do. But it’s the gameplay that sells Cake Mania 3, and the “take order, bake cake, place frosting, and deliver to customer” process is familiar to any service game fan. Though previous games have been criticized as being too difficult, I found this one too easy - in the first hour, I was consistently nailing the expert goals with time left to spare. But as I got to my second destination with more money and equipment, that’s when things started getting tough. Since the game’s difficulty depends on what kind of equipment you purchase between levels, the more upgrades you can afford, the more complex each stage becomes. Throw in some kooky customers (Emperors that demand to be served first, and dinosaurs that eat other customers when angry) and you’ll have your hands full fast.

This game has great art, fully voiced cutscenes, and wacky humor, but it has slow loading times and sometimes not-so-intuitive goals. Unlike more recent service games like Jenny’s Fish Shop, Cake Mania 3 doesn’t have a lot of visual feedback: you don’t know when combos are being created or which action is queued first. Even some of the fun minigames, which you can play to earn extra cash, require you to know mechanics that actually haven’t been taught to you yet. The rest of Cake Mania 3 is classic enough to be on the verge of being outdated - but as classics go, this one is so entertaining, especially in the later levels. We still recommend you download this and have fun with it. Just beware of those dinosaurs -you won’t like them when they’re angry!

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