You are a young lady who wishes to be the town’s best pastry chef.  The Pastry Fairy hears you and decides to help make your wish come true (I can’t make this stuff up folks).  To do so, you must rise in the ranks of desserts and sweets making, winning cooking contests and making people happy.  Waku Waku Sweets is a cooking game for all ages exclusively on Switch.

When you start your career, you’ll view a map of places to visit in town.  You can visit a couple of places per in-game day.  You’ll start at the bakery you just got hired on, and anytime you come here, you’ll make a dessert from one of the recipes you have.  You won’t get to keep the dish, but you will earn money.  Spend the money you earn at a couple of shops on the map.  One shop sells recipes so you can cook more things.  They also sell items to decorate your room with.  Another store lets you buy clothes and change the style and hair color of your character.

When the day is done, you must go back home.  But you can still do things in your house, like dress up in the clothes you bought, and cook more sweets.  The confections you make at home won’t earn you any money, but you can keep them.  Other spots on the map may have exclamation points above them.  Visit them to talk to a person who may want a sweet to snack on.  If you have one in your inventory, you can give it to them to make them happy.  The game says that the dessert fairy needs people to be happy so she can make your wish come true, but there’s nothing in the game indicating how far or how much ‘happy’ you need.

But there is one thing you can see to tell how to progress.  Make enough three-star sweets and a rainbow meter will fill.  When it is full, you can enter a cooking contest.  If you win, your rank will go up and you can buy more recipes and cook more sweets, and then the process starts over again.  To cook your masterpieces, you’ll play mini-games that represent each step of the recipe.  It’s very much like Cooking Mama.  You can use regular controls or motion controls, both work very well.  In fact, it’s super easy to make 100 percent complete dishes as long as you follow the on-screen instructions shortly after they’re presented.  The lighter difficulty makes this game great for younger players or beginners.

I only had a couple of minor problems with the game.  The play is very repetitive, as you must make recipes multiple times before you can get more, and many of them are almost the same thing just with a different step thrown in.  Like swiss rolls and strawberry rolls are pretty much the exact same process, except you must cut up strawberries in one.  The other problem I had with the game is that since it is very Japanese, some players may not be familiar with the sweets you must make in the game, and it can get a little confusing.  For instance, someone may want you to make Wagashi, which is a category of Japanese sweets.  And dorayaki is in that category.  I didn’t know that at first, so I wasn’t sure what to make for someone.  And the only reason why I knew what dorayaki was is because I’ve watched the Doraemon anime.  But otherwise, this is a suitable cooking game that would fill the void for anyone who enjoys Cooking Mama.  I’m surprised there isn’t a real Cooking Mama game on the Switch already.  The Wii had like, three.

Kid Factor:

Nothing violent or objectionable here.  Reading skill is helpful for the text.  Parents can even choose how long kids can play in this game.  Waku Waku Sweets is rated E for Everyone.

Tags: Game Reviews