Cake Invaders Review

Cake Invaders’ story (and I use that term loosely) revolves around German-inspired Baumkuchen cakes that drive Japanese people bonkers. Unfortunately for them, hungry invaders from across the universe have discovered this German tasty treat. It’s up to you to defend those delicious desserts from alien invaders. How long will you survive?

Cake Invaders is a vertical shoot’em up, a.k.a. shmup, where instead of having free movement, players are fixed at the bottom of the screen (think Space Invaders but you can’t move) and they need to aim their weapon at the incoming alien threats and destroy them before they reach the cakes on the ground.

While you will mostly use your default minigun, if you see a rainbow-colored small Baumkuchen and shoot it, you will be rewarded with a bonus power-up/perk. You’ll either benefit from increased firepower, exploding bullets, additional crew members, etc. in order to help you survive the neverending onslaught of enemy forces. At first, it’s annoying, but once you get some power-ups, it makes feel more “fair”.

The game looks great and colorful as a whole. While there isn’t much in terms of background change, as you progress through each wave, the area will have slightly different color palettes to provide a visual change from one wave to another. The enemy variety is surprisingly decent. The soundtrack is a cutesy score that matches the game’s visuals.

Unfortunately, the game’s problem is affecting an essential part of it: the gameplay. Your character’s weapon can’t move around fast enough to destroy everything on screen. This means if you’re focusing on destroying targets coming from the left and trying to move to the right to kill incoming enemies, chances are you won’t make it fast enough to kill everything before anything reaches the precious loot. Even when adjusting the sensibility in the options menu it still makes for a frustrating experience.

I’m a huge fan of shmups and was actually looking forward to getting it sometimes with Cake Invaders given its different mechanic where your hero stays fixed on the screen, but it was very disappointing. Not only is the game very light on gameplay variety, but the core mechanic of the game also doesn’t work properly to begin with unless you get the patience to survive until you get some help. While there’s some fun to be had, it’ll be very limited as players will quit after a few waves frustrated by the barely functional controls. This is an easy pass.