Back to the Bakery plays exactly like the original game Cake Mania, which I previously reviewed here. To summarize the game, you have a cake shop and must bake various cakes ordered by the customers that come into your store. As you earn more money you can upgrade the equipment in your bakery and get better ovens, icing machines and topping machines as well as different types of cakes and toppings (which allow you to charge more money). However, instead of trying to make enough money to buy back Jill’s grandparent’s bakery as you did in Cake Mania you are now trying to win them a Hawaiian vacation.

Unfortunately, the few differences I noticed between Back to the Bakery and Cake Mania were very minor and didn’t seem to add any real value to the game. Supposedly there are some new seasonal characters, but I didn’t really notice them because I was too busy running around baking cakes and I’m not sure they really affect how you play the game.

That doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with Back to the Bakery, but after playing 30 of the 36 new levels I came away feeling like I had been playing Cake Mania a second time because the “new” levels really just felt like “more” levels. And while it is a minor detail that doesn’t affect game play, I noticed that Back to the Bakery is missing the map that shows your progress between the different levels of the game. This is a minor thing, but I liked the map because it showed you making progress towards your goal.

While Back to the Bakery is described as an expansion pack, it is really a standalone game that does not require Cake Mania. This is both good and bad. It’s good because you can play Back to the Bakery without having to install or buy Cake Mania, but it is bad because if you already have Cake Mania installed, Back to the Bakery requires another 2,564K of memory. It also costs the same whether you purchased Cake Mania or not, so it is a unique game any way you look at it.

Conclusion

Back to the Bakery shares the same enjoyable features from Cake Mania but unfortunately, it also doesn’t add any significant improvements to it. If you already have Cake Mania you might consider playing it a second time from the beginning instead of buying Back to the Bakery. However, if you don’t have Cake Mania, it might be worth buying Back to the Bakery because even though it has fewer levels it is also less expensive.

Pros

• Just as much fun as the original Cake Mania
  
• Does not require you to have Cake Mania

Cons

• Not much different than playing the original Cake Mania
  
• Missing the map in between levels that shows your progress through the game
  
• New seasonal customers are hard to notice since you are too busy trying to bake cakes without making mistakes

Tested using Treo 700p.

Related Links

Buy Back to the Bakery

Buy Cake Mania

Review of Cake Mania

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Review of SplashMoney for Windows Mobile - Mar 28, 2008

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