Review: Cake Doodle – Universal App – Cake Making on iPhone and iPad
Overview
Make a virtual cake in seconds on your iPhone. Cake Doodle lets you make different cake recipes in different styles from mixing the ingredients, to baking, and decorating. How similar is this app to More Cupcakes, and is it really good for special occasions?
Features
There are eight cake flavors with dark chocolate, yellow cake, carrot cake, red velvet, lemon chiffon, banana, peanut butter, and instant cake. There are twelve styles to form you’re cake in with two layer round, three tiered topsy-turvy, and sheet cake to name a few. There are 49 frosting colors, 74 icing tips, and 71 cake toppers.
The Good
The cake making process is streamlined with the virtual interface so it’s extremely easy to do. You simply pick the type of cake then put all the ingredients in the bowl, stir, put in oven, and then you can decorate. You can have a nice looking cake in under a minute without the mess, work, or fun of actually making a cake.
There are multiple types of cakes, and multiple formations to make them in. When you’re putting in the ingredients it’s neat that you have to pour in the milk, crack the eggs and shake the salt. You also get to drag your finger in a stirring motion to stir all the ingredients to make the mix ready for the oven.
The decorating aspect has tons of customizable options from the color frosting, the tip to spread the frosting, and the decorations to place on the cake. The app is a neat little idea to make up a cake and e-mail it to a friend for a special occasion.
The Bad
The app is painfully similar to More Cupcakes except that you’re baking a cake rather than a cupcake. The same problems exist of going through the whole virtual process without the usual reward of having a cake to eat. There seems to be no point or purpose to the app other than waste time, and don’t we want to spend time rather than waste it.
It’s nonsensical to simply tap on a virtual cake to eat it. Applying the frosting is simply dragging your finger over the cake to reveal the frosting. If you were actually applying it you could run off the cake a little, but this method simply gives you a perfectly frosted cake.
When you want to do finer decoration with multiple colors and finely placed decorations it’s difficult to say the least. Even with the finest tip available you can’t draw very fine lines with your finger, and the input recognition of the app is limited. It makes it nearly impossible to have decorations line up, and smooth lines of anything.
The app is good one time through, but then there is practically no reason to ever open the app again. The different types of cakes all bake the same, make the same, and there is just no enjoyable aspect to want to make a cake again. The share option is only through e-mail, but it would be nice to share a cake through facebook or twitter.
The Verdict
Cake Doodle is very similar to More Cupcakes which is an inferior app in the crowded App Store. It’s more of the same of decorating virtual pastries without the enjoyable pay off of taste. The app is extremely simplistic in scope that is neat once through, but never again.
Cake Doodle is an app that should be free, and no one should bother paying for it.
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Review: Cake Doodle – Universal App – Cake Making on iPhone and iPad
Preview: Gravity Runner, Fast-Paced Running Right-Side Up And Upside Down
If you’re a fan of simple-yet-brilliant iPhone games like Canabalt and Doodle Jump, then you’re going to go bonkers for the upcoming release of Gravity Runner: a game that allows players to manipulate gravity as they guide a continuously-running player through a linear landscape.
For the past few hours I’ve been playing through a pre-release build of Gravity Runner, and I’m impressed. The idea behind the game is pretty simple: a figure appears on the screen, and runs automatically. By tapping the screen, you’re able to get him to jump over a series of obstacles (blocks, spike-pits, ravines), and guide him through the level.
However, there are times when a simple jump just won’t do it; the ravine is too wide, or the blocks are too high. Trying to perform a generic jump simply results in your character dying, which is obviously not good. This is where the twist comes in.
By tapping the screen while in mid-air, you can bring about a switch in gravity – meaning your character flips and soars towards the top of the screen, where he continues running upside down (providing there’s something to run on). You can then continue to jump over objects while running upside down, choosing to double-tap and switch gravity back whenever necessary.
As you’d expect, the landscape you encounter in Gravity Runner forces the player to switch gravity several times throughout a level – indeed, this is necessary to please the timer which ticks away in the top-right corner of the screen. In addition to this, players are also confronted with “speed up” zones, and springs upon with your character may bounce upon. Coins also appear throughout the game, and utilizing the control of gravity often helps in reaching these out-of-place pieces of gold.
Gravity Runner’s retro graphics combined with the smooth gameplay, and the gravity-switching novelty, makes it extremely entertaining to play. The app’s developer (We Are Colin) has done a great job. The game is due for release in August, and it’ll be priced at $0.99. We’ll be posting when it’s eventually released, so keep your eyes peeled. And in the meantime, why not take a look at Gravity Runner’s site – and tell us your impressions of the game in the comments box at the very bottom of this article.
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Preview: Gravity Runner, Fast-Paced Running Right-Side Up And Upside Down
