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
Pottery HD for iPad- app review
Pottery HD is a unique virtual clay pottery app that can really only be done on the iPad. It shows what an enterprising developer can do with a large multitouch interface. This game is fun and relaxing.
When the game first launches, I was caught a little off guard as I had no idea what to do. You have a “Create” button and that is it. So, I started to create, experimenting with the controls. You can make the clay taller and shorter, wider and thinner. That’s about it. So, I made a pot and fired it up in the kiln. When it was done, it gave me an option to sell it. I thought to myself, “Who is going to buy it?”. As it turns out, no one regretfully as it is all virtual. Once I sold my pottery I earned some virtual money. At the main menu a new feature appeared, “Shop”. Now I had access to paints and brushes. I had a new feature appear as well, “Inbox”. So it appears that as you play the game you are given different objectives; unique pieces of pottery to make. You can reference the photo given to you and once you make it, you can send it off to the virtual requestor. You can play Pottery HD independent of the virtual quests and just have fun adding lots of different pottery creations to your collection. If you like, you can even share these creations with friends via email.
I have had a lot of fun with this game, however, I left it me wanting so much more. For example, I would like a way to regulate the spinning of the pottery wheel; it stays at a constant speed. Also, you can’t add or remove clay either. It would be great to add globs of clay to truly make your pottery any size you want, but instead, you are limited by the vertical size of the screen. The biggest enhancement I would like to see is the ability to share online. The marketplace is limited to a virtual settings, you can’t see other users creations. This is such a wasted opportunity in my opinion.
Overall I really enjoyed Pottery HD, but it’s glaring lack of features and options lend me to recommending only for the most casual of users.
$4.99- iTunes Link
Pros
- Pottery looks beautiful
- Sensation of actually making pottery
- the Inbox adds hours of creative fun if you are stumped on what to make
Cons
- Not completely fleshed out with features (missing ability to control clay wheel rotation)
- No Internet- based way to trade with others
Pottery HD for iPad- app review is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
