Cooking the Sweet Stuff on Facebook, Some More, with Baking Life
Baking Life, a new restaurant-style game from Zip Zap Play, is probably most similar to games like Restaurant City and Café World. Essentially, players are tasked with the creation of a successful bakery, and in the process, decorating it the way they see fit.
It’s a game mechanic we’ve all seen before, but at the very least, this newer application comes with a few nuances that make it at least feel a little bit different.
The concept is three-fold: Bake goods, display goods, sell goods. The mechanic works pretty much the same as Café World in that you choose a recipe (which costs a small sum of money) and click the oven half a dozen times to melt butter, roll dough, sprinkle cinnamon, etc. After all the prep is done, the food takes X amount of time to cook. Obviously, the higher level the food item, the more time it takes to create.
Once food is baked, it must be put in one of your display cases for customers to browse (if you wait too long, it will burn). Based on the item placed, it will generate a finite number of servings that will continue to be bought at one of your cash registers until consumed. As expected, once all servings are purchased, the player needs to cook more.
This is actually where the first nice change comes into play. Actually, it’s not so much an interesting mechanic as it is a usability improvement. Once your display cases are full, you are not hindered from making more goods. Well, you are prevented from making new types of items, but if you continue to bake the same ones, you can add that stock to the displayed stock.
Say, for example, you have a display case of cinnamon rolls. Now, they take five minutes to bake, but only have 13 servings. However, you could bake four sets of rolls and then have 52 servings. Furthermore, you can add more at any time.
As far as interesting new features go, the most curious is the ability to actually design and sell your own personalized cupcakes. Of course, this includes more than just frosting and cake mix, but you also get to pick from some fancy linings and some rather bizarre toppings that range from sprinkles to monster tentacles. The more fancy your design, the more it costs to make, but also, the more it sells for. Additionally, up to four varieties of these custom creations can be placed into a single display case, and you can even “send” your friends (though this just means post on their wall) one in order to earn extra servings.
Regarding other social features, users can also hire their friends to work for their bakeries in order to cut down on the cost of non-player character “Temp Workers” that actually get a wage. Unfortunately, this is a mere wall post, similar to Hotel City, meaning they have to click first to be eligible employees. Beyond this, the game has your typical leaderboard system based on each users’ level and you can visit one another’s virtual spaces whenever you wish (and even cash in on some of their revenue if they don’t come back often).
There are a few other minor elements that are worth pointing out as well. As users level up, more than just mere recipes are ungated. As levels increase, players are able to buy extra gas lines, electrical outlets, phone jacks, and expansion space. Each of these are needed to add extra ovens, display cases, registers, and… expansion space respectively. Basically, this is preventing people from simply constructing nothing but production décor in order to level quickly.
On the negative side of things, for every customer you serve, your bakery’s hype increases. This is how you get more customers, faster, but it rarely seems to go down. Even when customers are waiting in line for a good long while, they don’t appear to get upset; the hype just goes up by less. Eventually, they will get annoyed enough to leave, and your hype drops, but it takes a very long time before they do lose patience. It’s almost too easy. Furthermore, NPCs have little thought bubbles to display what they think, and thus far, we’ve only seen a happy face, a ticking clock, and the occasional angry face. Frankly, there could be a lot more they could complain about.
Other issues stem from the same complaints we originally had with Restaurant City. The décor doesn’t really do anything. It’s a great opportunity to take a page from city-building games and have it improve hype, but it’s strictly for personal aesthetics. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it just underplays the potential the feature has. Not only that, but a lot of the decorum is yet to be available.
Overall, Baking Life is not an original idea so much as it is a revised rendition of the older restaurant titles and repainted with a new premise. It’s still a decent game despite being rather easy to play, and missing out on more interesting mechanics, and its few new nuances do make it feel a little bit different from its predecessors at least (even if it isn’t a lot). Nevertheless, with almost 110,000 monthly active users the past few days, its probably safe to assume that any such qualms are either forgive, or overlooked, by many of the title’s player base.
July 7th, 2010 at 9:03 am
You may want to amend the part about customers having patience. Most of the forum posts are about frustrations with the clock starting to tick once they enter the bakery and needing at least 4 customers with smileys to get 1 hype point, but only 1 sour face to take what you just acquired away. And it happens all the time. If you start moving layout around to try improve the hype, mostly it doesn’t help because you still are tied to having your registers not too far/not too close to the door.
July 7th, 2010 at 9:09 am
One other thing of note is if you keep baking and the goods are done, unless you have free displays to serve them, your goods will be burnt after x minutes, so if don;t plan the timing right, you end up deleting good in display to accommodate newly baked good. There are no storage spaces for baked goods awaiting service. There is a ‘Wait’ option to serve the baked products, but the “wait’ does not cater to when your next display counter gets empty to serve it. It is eventually another burnt product unless you resort to buying their fix with real life money.
July 20th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
I am experiencing difficuties building my coffee machine after i got my metal plates it would not allow me to got to the next item which is the wooden boards to continue building my coffee machine. Can you look into this issue please I enjoy playing all your games.Baking life is one of my favorites Thank in advance for your help.
August 11th, 2010 at 1:44 am
whew!!!!!i so love baking life …its just i had a hard time building my coffe machine …and expanding ny bakery..but i love it….
August 12th, 2010 at 7:18 am
rhe
August 30th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
I am in love with Baking Life but they do need different things in Gifts to send others on Baking Life than just the stock standard that you can bake yourself, cause there is no real advantage that i can see to Gifting accept in the beginning when you dont have enough ovens. And the cupcakes are fun to send. My Hype dropped from 110 to 16 and remained there for 2 solid days, I got alot of good advice like move registeres closer to doors, seperate ovens & display cabinets so food magicly appears in hands and they aren’t walking (haven’t perfected this yet) building coffee machine drops hype but once running its back up, and MOST IMPROTANTLY dont just bake long term goods, quick baking is teh high turnover food that people want. And Donuts & Independence Cake are the 2 things get your XP up.
September 2nd, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Hi! Baking Life is the only game I play in Facebook however I’m starting to get really frustrated. I believe I’ve done everything with regards to moving all the things around just to improve the Hype but nothing is really happening. Actually what’s happening is the Hype is getting lower and lower. I really don’t know what else to do =(
September 16th, 2010 at 5:59 am
Hi!It’s really fun playing Baking Life! My Hype and
Style is getting lower day by day. I don’t know what to do. Please help me. I really don’y know whay to do. Thanks! :)
September 26th, 2010 at 12:51 am
I really enjoy playing baking life. Infact, its the only game I have been able to really get into. But every since I started playing it on my computer, I pull it up & then a few seconds later a message pops up saying my game cannot be saved. Whats up with this. Please help because it freezes my game up. And also I no longer have my facebook credits that I bought with my own money. What happened 2 them???
September 27th, 2010 at 2:01 am
gusto kong mapaganda ang baking life ko
October 1st, 2010 at 11:30 am
level top
October 9th, 2010 at 9:56 am
hello. i wanna ask. whats the name of level 24 in baking life? i forgot :D thanks!
October 29th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
[...] comprehensive list what other games, beyond this roundup, are doing including Treasure Madness, Baking Life, Ravenwood Fair, and much [...]
November 5th, 2010 at 9:13 pm
Hi, after i put something away, where can i get it back? i looked everywhere but i cant find a sorage button or anything like that :(
February 7th, 2011 at 1:25 am
I very much enjoy Baking Life but cannot seem to get any of my friends interested in playing. Is there a place where players can ask for friends and neighbors? Thanks.
April 15th, 2011 at 4:50 am
I love Baking Life it is a cool game.
May 11th, 2011 at 4:15 pm
What is the problem with sending eggs…I have never hit the skip button yet it keeps sayin I did…I am frustrated and just want to meet my potentiol when ther are obsticles in the way….HELP me solve this problem…as a developer I know u want everything to work correctly….HeLP
June 5th, 2011 at 5:55 pm
@Marilyn Bravo.
you dont have a storage spot on the game, you have to go to the store and look at the same exact item and color to either sell/place your item.
@ Stacey,
I would suggest you buy more items that have enough style to make a difference in your style points. You might also want to try buying more ables,chairs, or display cases,ovens, to get more people attracted to your shop. You should be able to get a few customers every few minutes to save money for these items, sadly the layout does not affect the hype or style, only customers can judge that, also if your looking to upgrade or complete sets add more bl friends and ask for these certain parts. Lastly, i would advise you look at your normal baking routine, what do you usually put out for sale? do they sell? you may just need to change t up a bit put short and long baking item’s. I hoped this helped, please feel free to add me (Alexis Butler)