Price: Free Score: 7/10 Category: Games
Successful social game developer TeamLava have just released Bakery Story for iPhone and iPad, the next title in their popular Story series. Bakery Story follows on from app store chart toppers Restaurant Story, City Story and Farm Story, with the same basic winning formula.
Bakery Story lets players design and run their own pastry and coffee shop; you can bake sweets, cakes, cookies and more. As you progress through the game you gain experience points and level up which enables you to access new recipes, equipment upgrades and decorations to transform your little shop into the ultimate neighborhood hot-spot.
Visually, the game is great – the graphics are crisp and colorful, with a high level of detail in all of the illustrations. The controls are simple and easy to learn, you simply tap on a piece of equipment to select it, choose a recipe and then tap a few times to prepare the item – and then wait. Bakery Story, just like the other Story games before it, and Farmville before all of them – requires players to either wait out the 24 hour+ production clock on some dishes, or use ‘diamonds’ to speed up the process (which need to be purchased in-game). It’s not so much a criticism of Bakery Story in itself, but rather a limitation of the ‘free social game’ genre.
There are some items that only have 1-5 minute production times so players can still actually ‘play’ the game rather than just intermittently logging on to sell their goods and start the cycle again. If you don’t mind the waiting, Bakery Story is a fun and addictive game and you can enjoy it without spending any real money – it might just take you a little longer.
Bakery Story is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later
