There’s a kind of German cake called Baumkuchen, and you bake it by rolling batter on a spit and spinning it around.  I’d like to try it, but it sounds like a pain to make!  Because of how you make it, the cake looks like it has rings, like the ones you find in trees.  In fact, the direct translation of Baumkuchen is ‘tree cake,’ Baum meaning tree and Kuchen meaning cake in German (my German classes in high school and college finally paying off).  This kind of cake is also popular in Japan for some reason.  And I learned all of this by playing Cake Invaders.  Who says video games don’t teach you anything?  Anyway, in Cake Invaders, you must protect slices of Baumkuchen from waves of aliens in this classic arcade styled shooter.  It’s like a cross between Space Invaders and Missile Command, and it’s available on nearly all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

In the game, you control a cursor around the screen, like in Missile Command.  Hold down the fire button and your little space girl on the bottom of the screen will fire bullets where your cursor is.  You have five slices of Baumkuchen at the bottom of the screen to protect, with three rings each.  Although they could be anything, arches, onion ring slices, etc.  From the top of the screen, aliens will come down in waves, and if they touch one of the pieces of cake arches, it’ll disappear.  When all your cake is gone, the game is over.

Sometimes, power-ups will appear for you to shoot.  When you do, you can get bonuses like shields for your cake, or temporary shots like piercing lasers or exploding bullets.  But the most important power-up gives you another space girl that’ll fire more bullets for you, and you can have up to five.  But this is where the game gets kind of ‘broken.’  The first stage is really hard because you only have one person firing, but once you get more space girls shooting, the game becomes WAY easier and you can last several more waves.  Also you can’t continue where you left off, so it really does feel like an arcade game.  It’s still fairly fun, and the price is right at less than five bucks.  But it’s not any better than the games it’s trying to imitate.

Kid Factor:

Cake Invaders is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Mild Fantasy Violence.  You shoot lasers at cartoony aliens that explode when defeated, but that’s it.  Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, but not necessary just to play.

Tags: Game Reviews