Oct 07, 2009  Cake Mania Main Street is the fourth installment of the award winning online PC Cake Mania Franchise from Sandlot games.

The Cake Mania series is one of the most widely-recognized names in casual gaming. Three main installments have hit PC and Mac platforms over the last few years, and you can even find Cake Mania on mobile phones! Now, with the release of Cake Mania: Main Street, the series veers into a slightly new direction, providing more varied gameplay and a host of new and interesting challenges. It's not just cake anymore, as now you'll be slinging sushi and building burgers in order to raise money to revive Jill's home town!

After traveling through time to bake cakes for dinosaurs, ancient Egyptians, and Merlin in Cake Mania 3, Jill has returned to her home town of Bakersfield. Main Street isn't what it used to be, however, as little more than crickets inhabit the buildings that once were bustling shops. The new mega mall is to blame, and Jill wants to fight back the only way she knows how: by baking cakes.

This time around, plopping red icing on heart-shaped desserts is only a small part of the experience. In a unique twist from the norm, you find yourself managing not one shop but four, collecting profits to help buy improvements and attractions for Bakersfield's Main Street. Jill's pals are along for the ride, including her husband Jack who runs the Burger Barn, Risha who manages a flower boutique, and Tiny in charge of Sumo Sushi.

Starting with Jill's bakery, you'll engage in the same sort of activities previous Cake Mania games dealt with. Customers come in, order a cake shape with colored icing and maybe a few extras, then you get to work, building their order as quickly as you can. Gameplay starts a little slow, but after a few levels you earn enough cash to buy a few upgrades to make things run faster and make more money.

You could also use that cash to open another shop, the first of which is Burger Barn. Creating burgers is a much different affair than cakes. The entire layout is mouse-driven as you click and drop ingredients onto trays right before the customers' eyes. After you earn cash you can unlock new and more complex recipes, many of which you couldn't pay me to try at home. Once the money piles up, you'll be able to buy and open both the flower and sushi shops, each featuring remixes on the bakery and burger joint's gameplay, respectively.

Every shop has a hefty set of levels to complete, each getting progressively more difficult. Once unlocked, you can jump back and forth between stores as you please, spending money on upgrades from a collective cash pool, or buying attractions to help spruce up the main part of town.

Analysis: I was thrilled to see Cake Mania pull itself out of the cake business and branch out into other goods and styles of preparation. The original gameplay is still charmingly alluring, but being able to hop back and forth between sushi shop, flower boutique and burger joint does wonders for longevity. Plus, it's like you get four games rolled into one, which, hey, who wouldn't like that?

The variety of customers you'll deal with has always been a high point in the Cake Mania series, and this installment is no different. Character crossovers were great. Seeing people from cutscenes appear in your store adds a new dimension to the game, and watching vampires, cupids and aliens interact with each other and the stores adds a quirky layer of fun. I was also surprised to see Jill herself visiting me when I was slinging burgers!

Even though you run four separate businesses, the latter two are just remixes of the former, which was a bit of a disappointment. There are gameplay shifts, of course, but I was more disheartened by having to start over with the slower, less complex levels in a new building when I was ready for more of a challenge. Being able to play any store at any time was a big help, but more variety would have been — ahem — icing on the cake.

It's the most unique Cake Mania title to date in terms of gameplay, with over 100 levels, four shops to manage, and a nice, campy sense of humor. Cake Mania: Main Street builds on the series' foundations well, and while it may not be a radical departure from the norm, there's plenty to enjoy in this game.

Windows:
Download the demo
Get the full version

Mac OS X:
Not available.
Try Boot Camp or Parallels or CrossOver Games.

a:1:i:0;a:2:s:13:”section_title”;s:35:”Cake Mania: Main Street Walkthrough”;s:12:”section_body”;s:24678:”

Welcome to Gamezebo’s strategy guide for Cake Mania: Main Street.

If you are reading this guide you apparently have decided to help Jill in her recent adventure, Cake Mania Main Street. This guide contains general tips, further strategies for the different restaurants, as well as a list of all the monuments you can purchase and how you can obtain trophies. We hope that this guide will help you if you get stuck at any point.

GENERAL TIPS

• All in all Cake Mania features 100 levels at four different locations.
• In Cake Mania Main Street you are able to play in different shops. You can choose your current shop on the map, from where you can also upgrade some monuments. In the beginning you can only choose the Evans Bakery to play with:

• If you click on a shop you can decide whether you want to play in it, or if you just want to upgrade it to increase the daily intake:

• Before each day you are informed about the amount of money you have to earn to reach the 'goal', and to reach the 'super star goal':

• The hearts near the thought-bubble of any customer represents his or her current patience. Serve them as quickly as possible before their patience runs out which causes them to leave immediately. Inside the thought-bubble you can see the customer’s order:

• After the second level in the Evans Bakery Jack’s Burger Barn at Main Street will be unlocked. You can either purchase this new shop and continue playing there, or you can go on playing at the Evan’s Bakery.
• Take into account that from each level’s earnings a certain amount of profit is deducted to the town’s benefit:

• If you serve a customer just in time before he could leave angry you will get a so-called break time, in which time stops, enabling you to catch up with other orders. To activate the break time, you have to click on the little symbol at the bottom of the screen. However, this is only possible, when one or more little green dots can be seen beside the symbol:

• Serving cookies to customers does not break any chains. However, throwing away ingredients or finished products does break chains.
• When you upgrade the different shops, their interior will change, too, so it is also worth replaying levels.
• Both in Sumo Sushi and the Burger Barn, ingredients will be in your hand as long as there are customers whose order currently requires this ingredient, or, in case of ingredients that can be cooked, grilled, or fried, as long as there is room for them to be prepared.
• Jill as well as Risha can only carry one item at a time. Take this into consideration to avoid common mistakes, such as preparing unwanted layered cakes.
• At the Bakery and the Flowers Store, you should place the oven and a topping machine, respectively the flower machine and a wrapping machine very close to each other at the beginning. This is advisable because both Jill and Risha are very slow before you upgrade their shoes, and by placing machines close to each other you reduce the working paths of Jill and Risha.
• If the Rush Bonus is not activated, you should avoid having four customers in your stores at the same time, especially if you have not the cookie machine yet. You can just leave money on the counter to determine how money customers you can serve, it won’t vanish. This strategy does only work in levels without the Crook. In levels where the crook is one of your customers, always take the money from the counter when he enters the store.

Rush Bonus:

• The Rush Bonus is only available at the Bakery and the Flower Shop. It is activated either by the French Guy or if your perform three of the same actions in a row multiple times.
• This 'power-up' only lasts for a short time, so you should fulfill as many orders as possible in this period. During this 'rush' every machine will finish any task immediately, so that each bouquet or cake is finished within a short moment:

Small Guide to bake cakes:

• In the background you can see the oven where you prepare the cakes. Simply click on the shape the customer desires and wait until the yellow bar in the middle is filled. After that you can take the cake and deliver it to the customer, or, if the customer wants the cake to have a topping, carry the cake to the topping-machine and click on the desired topping. You do not have to put the cake on the topping-machine and then press the topping, it suffices to just click the topping and the cake will be finished automatically:

• The creation of layered cakes is easier as it seems. Simply prepare both layers in the ovens, carry the bottom layer to the topping machine, and wait until it is finished. Then carry the top layer to the same topping machine, and create a second topping, and layered cake is finished. If your store is not terribly busy and you already have two ovens and two topping machines, you can prepare both layers separated from the each other. All you have to in the end is to pick up the finished top layer and put it on the finished bottom layer.

Upgrades – Evans Bakery:

• After each level you will automatically get to the shopping screen where you can purchase upgrades for the Bakery.
• In contrast to similar games, the upgrades-screen of Cake Mania offers you a variety of possible actions. Besides the general ability to purchase new upgrades you are also able to drag existing equipment around the bakery to make your work even more effective, and you can sell existing upgrades if you don’t need them (anymore) or if you need the money for another upgrade:

• To move your current equipment, simply click on it and hold the left mouse button, then drag it to any available desired position:

• At first you should purchase the plate where you can place an unwanted cake, and new shoes that will let Jill walk faster. This is the best and cheapest way to increase your effectiveness in the beginning.
• You can absolutely neglect the tv. Focus on upgrading one machine of each type to the maximum early on, and constantly increase Jill’s walking speed. It is also important to have three ovens, two topping machines, and both decoration machines very soon, so that you can prepare more than one order simultaneously.

Cake Mania Main Street

Special Customers:

• The Aristocratic Guy immediately activates the Rush Bonus when you serve him the menu. This only goes for the Bakery and the Flower Shop, in the other two locations he offers no bonus:

• The Pirate will scare your customers if you let him wait to long. Serve him before you serve other customers to avoid this:

• Cupid will pair up with another Cupid at the Bakery and the Flower Shop. Be prepared to serve a double order in this case:

• The Vampire bites other customers if he gets too impatient. This causes the bitten customer to become a vampire, too, which will change their order. This happens very quickly and on a regular basis, so my advise is to first finish orders by vampires or to wait until other customers have become vampires before serving them:

• The Hippie will take anything that you serve him, so you should make full use of this by serving him the most expensive cake:

• The Sumo Wrestler will order three different cakes. However he won’t order them at once, but rather successively, so he will stay in your store for a much longer time than other customers:

• The Ninja is a very impatient customer, he already has only two stars when he enters your store. He can also attack other customers with smoke, which will make it impossible for Jill to interact with them for a few seconds:

• Superman Wannabe: He can superfreeze other customers when he gets too impatient, with a similar result as the smoke attack from the Ninjas – Jill is not able to interact with freezed customers for a short moment:

• Chef Gordon will turn every customer into a Hot Dog(-Man) shortly after he has ordered. This will also change the orders of the transformed customers:

• The Alien changes the current channel to the SciFi channel if you already have a tv when it enters the shop:

• The Crook will steal any money currently lying on the counter, so be quick to collect it if he appears in your store:

Cake Mania Main Street

• Superman as well as the Ninja will only affect one customer which are next to them, while the Vampire and Chef Gordon will change all customers currently present into vampires, respectively Hot Dogs.

The Burger Barn:

• The gameplay you will encounter in this shop strongly differs from that of the Bakery, and some players might know it from games like Burger Island. Instead of preparing cakes you have to serve burgers to your customers.
• This has also a very different upgrade screen as a consequence. In the Recipe Book you can purchase more expensive and complicated recipes as you proceed in the Burger Barn:

• Put the order of any customer always on the tray directly in front of him. You cannot put any ingredients on the tray before the customer has decided what he wants:

• As soon as the customer orders, the order of the ingredients is displayed in his thought-bubble. This means that you do not have to care too much about recipes:

Cake Mania Street Outlaws

• In the fashion of the Bakery you can throw unwanted products or ingredients in the trash bin, but this will cost you money.
• If you complete four of the same actions in a row you will earn bonus money. Therefore it is advisable to try serving four customers at the same time whenever it is possible – better to say, whenever the patience of your current customers allows it.
• It is important to know that the patties for the burgers cannot burn, so you should always keep four of them on the grill to be prepared for the next load of customers. When different kinds of patties are available it is better to keep one of each ready on the grill.
• Fish can only be cooked in the fryer and fortunately fish does not burn either:

• The Hippie will always pay the same amount of money, regardless of what you serve him, so just put any ingredient on his tray. He won’t pay much but is very patient, so you should include the Hippie in chains whenever possible.
• In some levels of this shop your customers will only order milk shakes. Here you have to be quick and you should not care about chaining. It is more important to take the characters of your customers into consideration and to serve and cash out all of them as quickly as possible. Serve customers like the Chef, the Vampires, and the Superman-Wannabes first, and only give more expensive shakes to the Hippie.

Risha’s Flowers:

• This shop can be easily compared to the Bakery – the machines work in the same way, you control Risha instead of Jill, and the upgrades are extremely similar and purchased in the same way, with the major difference that there is one more machine for decorations. While you have toppings and decorations in the bakery, you have wrapping, ribbons, and decorations in the Flower shop.
• The Sumo Wrestler will order order only once in this shop, in contrast to the Bakery.
• After the first level you should not buy any upgrade, after the second level you should buy a second wrapping machine and quicker shoes. The next upgrade should be a second oven, and after that you cannot do much wrong with regards to upgrades.
• In the beginning of this shop an arrangement of the machines like that on the screenshot below is very advisable, because you can work much quicker that way:

• In this shop the cookies become much more important than in the previous two locations, because for one thing customers get impatient even quicker, and for another thing the orders in the later levels take really a long time to prepare, so that you cannot afford to lose any customer.
• It is very efficient to upgrade one oven, one wrapping machine, one ribbon machine, and the decoration machine to the maximum very early. Thereby you will be able to finish more orders at the same time.

Sumo Shushi:

• This shop strongly resembles the Burger Barn, so you will be familiar with it very quickly.
• Purchase one recipe after each day, and upgrade the cookie machine as soon as you can afford to. The tv is absolutely not necessary in this shop.
• Before the exact order of ingredients appears in a customer’s thought-bubble, there will be only an image of the customer’s desired recipe. Only by this image you will already be able to guess the first one or two ingredients, in example rice, green leaves, or noodles. In this way you can begin to prepare orders much earlier.

The Course of the game:

• When you have finished the Evans Bakery that consists of 25 days (=levels), the Mega Jill monument will be unlocked and you should purchase Burger Barn if you have not already done so:

• When you have purchased the Burger Barn, you will unlock the Big Burger Bridge of Bakersfield at the same time.
• After the fifth level in the Burger Barn you will be able to purchase and play Risha’s Flower shop.
• When you have finished the Burger Barn, you should purchase Risha’s Flower shop for $500. This will also unlock the Glorious Garden.
• After the eighth level of Risha’s Flowers you will be able to purchase and play Sumo Sushi.
• When you have finished Risha’s Flowers buy Sumo Sushi for $800. This will also unlock the Japanese Tower.

Monuments:

• At the map of the town you are able to purchase and upgrade a lot of buildings that will even increase the daily income of the town. Since the money which you can invest into the town’s buildings is in no way related to the money which you need to upgrade the equipment of your restaurants, do not save any penny. The more money you invest into the town, the more income the town will earn each day. And this again increases the amount of money that you can invest into new buildings or further upgrades.
• Big Burger Bridge: You need $200 to purchase it. It will bring $20 income each day.
• Bakery Spring Cleaning: To upgrade it you have to pay $200. It will bring $10 income each day, and it will also unlock the world’s largest cake.
• Bakery Minor Renovations: Upgrading the Bakery once more with 'Minor Renovations' costs $300 and results in a daily intake of $15. This upgrade also unlocks the Fantastic Fountain.
• Bakery Major Renovations: This upgrade for the Bakery costs $500 and provides you with a daily intake of $20. After that you will also be able to build the Bakersfield Arch.
• Bakery Complete Overhaul: The last improvement for the Bakery costs $800 and increases the daily intake to $30. This will unlock the Wheel-O-Fun at the same time.
• Burger Barn Spring Cleaning: This upgrade costs $300 and provides $10 daily intake.
• Burger Barn Minor Renovations: This upgrade costs $550 and provides $15 daily intake.
• Burger Barn Major Renovations: For this upgrade you have to pay $950, and it results in $20 daily intake.
• Burger Barn Complete Overhaul: The last upgrade for this restaurant costs $1150 and provides you with $30 daily intake.
• Risha’s Flowers Spring Cleaning: This upgrade costs $700 and provides $10 daily intake.
• Risha’s Flowers Minor Renovations: This renovation costs $1000 and increases the daily intake to $15.
• Risha’s Flowers Major Renovations: You have to pay $1500 for this upgrade, which results in $20 daily intake.
• Risha’s Flowers Complete Overhaul: This last upgrade costs $2000 and provides you with $30 daily intake.
• Sumo Sushi Spring Cleaning: You have to pay $900 for this upgrade, that provides $10 daily intake afterwards.
• Sumo Sushi Minor Renovations: This renovation deducts $1500 from the town’s money, and increases the daily intake to $15.
• Sumo Sushi Major Renovations: This upgrade costs $3000 and results in $20 daily intake.
• Sumo Sushi Complete Overhaul: For the last improvement of this restaurant you will pay $4000, while the daily intake will increase to $30.
• Japanese Tower: You have to pay $1500 for this monument, which adds $20 to the town’s daily intake.
• Mega Jill: This monument depicting the heroine herself costs $1000 and results in $20 additional daily intake.
• World’s Largest Cake: For this mouth-watering monument you have to pay $2000, which adds $20 daily intake to the town’s income.
• Wheel-O-Fun: For this monument $3000 will be deducted from the town’s money, providing a daily intake of $20.
• Glorious Garden: The Garden costs $800 and provides $20 additional daily intake.
• Fantastic Fountain: This monument costs $600 and adds $20 to the daily intake.
• Bakersfield Arch: This monument is the cheapest, with a price of $400, but still increases the town’s daily intake at $20.
• At the end, when you have upgraded every restaurant to the maximum, and built every monument, the beautiful town of Bakersfield will look like that:

Trophies:

Cake Mania Main Street Online

• For each restaurant there are three trophies which you can obtain: One for finishing all the levels of this restaurant, one for finishing every level of this restaurant with expert score, and one for upgrading the restaurant to the maximum.
• There is also a fourth trophy for every restaurant apart from the Evan’s Bakery. You will get one trophy for just opening each of the other restaurants.
• You will get one trophy for completing the whole game.
• You can obtain two more trophies by unlocking and by purchasing every tourist attraction.
• The last trophy will be awarded if you can complete every level with expert score.

Cake Mania Steam

Congratulations, you have finished the game, thereby saving the town of Bakersfield from the evil of…a shopping mall.
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