Cake Mania

The player controls Jill, a baker. Customers come in and line up, giving Jill their orders. The player must then direct Jill to create the cake each customer wants, before the customer becomes tired of waiting and leaves, whereupon Jill loses a life. If Jill runs out of lives, the player loses the level and must try again from the most recent checkpoint.

Cakes in Cake Mania are created using the oven and the frosting machine; the cake has to be a specific shape and have a certain color of icing for each order. If the wrong cake is made the player can throw it away. In later levels, cakes are more complex to make, such as orders requiring several layers of cake and extra cake decorations. Different customers have different gameplay quirks (such as preferring a certain feature on their cakes) and differing levels of patience, and Jill can use purchasable items such as cupcakes and a television to help keep her customers patient while they wait.

Jill Evans, who was inspired by her baker grandparents, developed a love for pastry cooking and went to a culinary school. When Jill comes back from culinary school, she finds her grandparents' bakery, Evans' Bakery, closed. Jill decides to open her own bakery at her house and work her way up the business ladder so she can buy back her grandparents' bakery. She also learns how to deal with some very tricky customers along the way. Once successful, she is able to reclaim the bakery's deed and reopen Evans Bakery.

Taking place shortly after the events of the first game, Jill tries to win her grandparents a Hawaiian cruise vacation while renovating the bakery. She eventually succeeds after winning the Cake Mania Bake-Off contest.

Cake Mania was developed in St. Petersburg, Russia by Sandlot Games. Cake Mania was originally released on PC as a browser-based flash game version accessible for free on sites such as MSN Games, Big Fish Games, and RealArcade; it was the most downloaded PC game of 2006, with 55 million downloads. While Cake Mania could be played for free in browsers, the browser version is a demo that lacks all the levels and features of the full version, such as the ability to buy upgrades.

The sites hosting the game, such as MSN Games, also sold the full release of the game, which could then be downloaded. In addendum to charging for the full release, Cake Mania was also supported by browser-based advertising.

Cake Mania's release as a flash game on sites such as MSN Games was successful; it was the most downloaded PC game of 2006 with 55 million downloads, and Adweek stated that Cake Mania captured the female gaming market well, which made up 70% of MSN Gaming's visitors in 2006. The Nintendo DS version of Cake Mania was the version most widely reviewed, and received mixed reviews from critics. The review aggregator website Metacritic gave the DS version of Cake Mania a score of 55 from 100 based on 23 critics' reviews. Metacritic categorised the score as "mixed or average reviews".

Some reviews praised Cake Mania's 'addictive' gameplay, while others criticized it as 'repetitive' and 'overly simple'. Many reviewers compared Cake Mania to other service industry-related time management games such as Diner Dash or Tapper. IGN criticized the DS version for 'lack of depth' aside from a "rising difficulty curve", but praised its "cute" graphics. IGN expressed that while simple and repetitive, Cake Mania is a good 'casual' game, summarizing it as "fun but shallow".

A sequel Cake Mania 2: Jill's Next Adventure! was released in 2007. It received a 57/100 aggregate review score on Metacritic, indicating "Mixed or Average" reviews. Reviewers commented that the sequel didn't add much compared to the original, and that the Nintendo DS version had issues with the small screen and touchscreen controls.

Cake Mania 3 was released in 2008 and was rated 7.3/10 by IGN and 6/10 by GameZone. Reviewers commented that it was surprisingly difficult for a casual game.