Lemon Cake Review – Sugary Sweets Bakery Simulation in Test

Does Lemon Cake’s recipe of action gameplay mixed with some business simulation and flavored with hand-drawn graphics work?

Lemon Cake is a mix of soft economic sim in a bakery with action gameplay. We rebuild an old pastry shop, learn recipes, renovate and grow ingredients, and each piece of confectionery is hand-made by us. At the same time, the game features 3D graphics, but the models have hand-drawn textures, so everything looks not just cute, but more like a nice illustrated book.

German Version:

This article is available here as text, but also as a YouTube video (German voice-over, many subtitles). This way you can choose how you would like to enjoy it most.

Lemon Cake Review Video

German Voice-Over, many subtitles

Lemon Cake Game Review – Intro

Hi there, this is the Zap. In this Lemon Cake review, I introduce you to this cute bakery simulation. I’ll tell you how it is played, what’s in it and if I had fun with it. In the end, there is also a rating from me, but most of all I want to give you all the info, so you can decide for yourself if the game could be fun for you.

Lemon Cake is an indie game built and published by a solo developer completely on her own. I received a free review sample from Eloise, this talented indie dev lady. But this should have no bearing on my review, as I always test all games with the thought in the back of my mind, how would I feel if I had paid full price.

Lemon Cake Game Type

Lemon Cake is sugary sweet, in many ways. Not only are the hand-drawn backgrounds and characters really cute, but this is about strawberry donuts, chocolate croissants, and everything is so nicely drawn that it made me hungry right away.

We inherit an old bakery. And the ghost of a previous owner then helps us put it back into the business. Thereby the game is a mix of two parts, it mixes business or tycoon gameplay with an action game part.

On the one hand, it’s a smooth business simulation where we renovate our facility, plan recipes, and earn the money to buy new shelves, tables, or expansions for the store, kitchen, or greenhouse and barn.

We also have to constantly re-plan our menu because guests don’t like it when there isn’t enough variety in the menu or there aren’t any vegan, gluten-free sweets on sale.

On the other hand, we also control our shopkeeper directly. In doing so, we carry ingredients around, mix them, bake cakes, clean the kitchen, take orders from our customers, and serve them ourselves.

All of this as much as possible without sinking into the dirt, turning pastries into charcoal, letting our plants dry up, neglecting our cute animals, or scaring away our guests with boring menus and overly long waits. Lemon Cake really knows how to keep us on our toes here.

In total, we can gradually unlock 36 enhancements, some of which offer new game features and others improve existing functions or make our rotating company boss’s job easier. Whereby you can certainly give the character a masculine appearance. To do this, we get over 40 different recipes over time, which must be made from numerous different ingredients.

Here we are juggling a lot of parts at the same time and under slight time pressure. And in addition to responding quickly to customer demands, there’s always some pre-planning that goes into what to do next. That’s pretty stimulating for the mind. In the process, we get experience points for almost everything we do, move up in levels, learn new recipes, and take care of everything ourselves.

Lemon Cake Test – Opinion and Conclusion

Lemon Cake is built in Unreal Engine and has a very special graphic style. All elements are hand-drawn and animated in 3D. This colorful, cheerful design may not be for everyone, but many will love it as well. As a casual game, Lemon Cake is suitable for almost anyone who likes the graphic style, and it is absolutely kid and family-friendly.

And once you get into the game, it offers some interesting gameplay features. And the slightly action-heavy gameplay keeps you quite busy to do so, so you have to be nimble. Because the faster and more effectively you manage to bring in all the ingredients, bake, serve, and clean, the more money you’ll have in the till at the end of the day.

But at the same time, it takes some smart decisions that pull the game back a bit more towards economic simulation. For our money, we buy expansions, like in a skill tree, and so we can gradually expand our bakery and unlock new ingredients and features. Thus, over time, we get plants and animals that provide more ingredients, and eventually even a waitress and a cleaning robot in our bakery.

We can upgrade recipes and optimize our daily revenue through smart menu planning. However, you don’t need to expect extensive menu pricing, employee management, experimentation with new recipes, or similar features here, the simulation part isn’t that complex then. For me, there could have been more depth here, but for that, the game would very likely have lost accessibility with many kids on the other side.

Lemon Cake here offers a colorful and stimulating mix of action and gentle tycoon gameplay that requires finger dexterity but also a bit of brain. And along the way, a simplified look at the varied but stressful work of a small bakery is offered in a cute way.

Technically, I didn’t discover anything that could really cause problems. There are a few settings to customize the game to different computers, but they don’t go into too much depth. All keyboard mappings are completely customizable, which I think is very commendable.

The game has soft background music that strums pleasantly without being annoying and otherwise only a few sounds. In return, however, the game texts are translated into five languages in a way that is easy to understand.

Lemon Cake Gameplay Screenshots InGame

Lemon Cake Game Review – Rating

For the price of $15 or just under €12.50, Lemon Cake offers a few hours of interesting gameplay for almost every type of gamer. This can be extended to dozens of hours, depending on how much the gameplay captivates you. After all, getting the coveted recipe for the ultimate lemon cake could take quite a while. So some game time for the money is offered here.

All in all, Lemon Cake is a cute action-economy game that knows how to entertain and also creates a certain “just one more day” pull. Fans of hardcore economic simulations won’t be happy here, but for everyone else, and especially for kids, it’s very good.

To sum it up, I give Lemon Cake an 80% base rating for this, and for the very special graphic style, I give it another 2% as a bonus on top. This gives Lemon Cake a final rating of 82%. Should the game get some more depth in the simulation area and some replay value through updates, later on, there might be some more percentages in here.

Lemon Cake

Zap from ZapZockt.de

Does Lemon Cake’s recipe of action gameplay mixed with some business simulation and flavored with hand-drawn graphics work?
Lemon Cake is a mix of soft economic sim in a bakery with action gameplay. We rebuild an old pastry shop, learn recipes, renovate and grow ingredients, and each piece of confectionery is hand-made by us. At the same time, the game features 3D graphics, but the models have hand-drawn textures, so everything looks not just cute, but more like a picture book.

Business Sim

Action Gameplay

Scope

Graphics

Sound

Kids friendly and family friendliness

Price – Performance

Rating

For the price of $15 or just under €12.50, Lemon Cake offers a few hours of interesting gameplay for almost every type of gamer. This can be extended to dozens of hours, depending on how much the gameplay captivates you. After all, getting the coveted recipe for the ultimate lemon cake could take quite a while. So some game time for the money is offered here.
All in all, Lemon Cake is a cute action-economy game that knows how to entertain and also creates a certain “just one more day” pull. Fans of hardcore economic simulations won’t be happy here, but for everyone else, and especially for kids, it’s very good.
To sum it up, I give Lemon Cake an 80% base rating for this, and for the very special graphic style, I give it another 2% as a bonus on top. This gives Lemon Cake a final rating of 82%. Should the game get some more depth in the simulation area and some replay value through updates, later on, there might be some more percentages in here.

4.1

Outro

Do you like cute graphics and sweet cakes flavored with some action and tycoon gameplay? Or is Lemon Cake too colorful and cute for you? Feel free to write me your opinion in the comments or on the Zap Zockt Community Discord.

More gaming news and game reviews can be found on the YouTube channel or also here on https://zapzockt.de – It may be liked, shared and subscribed. Have a great day then, ciao ciao, your Zap.

Links und Quellen

Lemon Cake Steampage

Lemon Cake Dev Twitter

Éloïse Laroche @ YouTube