Review of SpongeBob's Krusty Cook-off: too bland

Eating at SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-off is like to dining at an upscale restaurant. As you gaze at the dish, you are struck by the elegance of each component and the way they complement one another. As soon as you taste it, you're disappointed since the amount of attention to detail that went into the feast's appearance doesn't transfer to its flavor. You've been tricked.

When you initially boot up Krusty Cook-off, you experience something similar. It looks much like the cartoon you grew up seeing, if not better. The soundtrack takes you back to your early years. With lots of well-written jokes that make you smile like a child again, the writing is spot-on. The truth, however, is nothing short of disappointing when you boot up a level expecting to have a ton of fun frying patties and selling them to undersea sea dwellers.

The Cooking Fever experience, which serves as the basis for SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-off, is condensed into the absolute minimum, leaving very little gameplay content.

Serving hungry customers food is your aim, much as in Cooking Fever. While making meals and receiving orders, you stand behind the counter. When it's ready to eat, you serve it to the client, who pays you and departs. After completing a level's goals and serving a certain number of clients, you collect your profits and advance. These profits may be used for a variety of restaurant improvements.

Yes, a lot of mobile games fit this description, but this is really simply tapping. Press to cook, press to combine ingredients, press to present, and press to discard food. Although we understand that Krusty Cook-off's creator, Nukebox Studios, is probably trying to appeal to a bit younger demographic than just an elderly mobile game editor, we're quite confident youngsters are capable of much more.

It might be immediately more interesting with a few little adjustments.It's surprising to see a lack of innovation since the touchscreen is one of the most tactile control systems available. Why can't we cook items by dragging them onto the grill? or apply the jelly directly on pancakes?We can't even see the smallest children finding enjoyment in this assignment since it is so lacking in substance.

Additionally, there isn't much variation within each level. They all play the same, but you have goals to accomplish, such as making sure no customers leave, avoiding food burns, or feeding a certain amount of patrons. Unless you just forget you were playing, it's quite improbable that you'll ever really lose a level. That may occur.

Similar to the upgrading system we discussed previously, it is quite basic. Buying new ingredients can boost your revenue, and investing in equipment will raise your efficiency by enabling you to prepare more at once or expedite cooking times. Additionally, you may buy furnishings and décor, which raises the amount of tips received from patrons.

The only true difficulty in Krusty Cook-off is to keep customers satisfied so they would leave large tips. Considering how eager marine animals seem to be, this is no small accomplishment. A green bar that indicates the amount of patience will begin to steadily decrease after they place their order, going from green to yellow and finally red. If you let something to sink to the bottom, the client will get disgusted and go.

You can counteract this by giving someone a cookie, but they are very uncommon and you can only get a few many times a day. Each time a batch is cooked, you may increase how much you are paid, but doing so will cost you gems—the premium currency. Although Krusty Cook-off isn't an especially greedy game, you may wonder whether the costly microtransactions are really worth it after making so many purchases.

For instance, upgrades need a mix of gems, the premium money, and coins, which you acquire via gameplay. This may be bought straight, or you can open chests and accomplish milestones to get little amounts for free. Playing the game rewards you with chests rather often, and thus far we haven't needed to buy more gems to enhance our restaurants.

Of course, you may use a gacha system to spend gems on new makeup. This allows you to customize the clothes of the playable characters SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidward. However, they have no gameplay benefits and are just decorative. Plus, if you're willing to wait, you may get a free gift once per day.

In general, SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-off proved to be quite inconsistent. It has excellent visuals, surpassing the nostalgia of the original cartoon series we grew up with. Even if it's infrequent, the writing is also rather humorous, giving us occasional giggles. The gameplay is simply not that compelling, which is what pulls it down. It makes Cooking Fever and similar apps so much simpler that almost nothing is left. Given that it's obviously intended for a younger audience, it's possible that this was done on purpose, but even for the smallest kids, we think it's too simplistic.

SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-off is available for iOS and Android users via the App Store and Google Play, respectively.