Cake Invaders [Xbox]

16 Mar

Cake Invaders is a Space Invaders inspired game where your sole aim is to protect your baumkuchen! A variety of bug-like aliens are dead set on getting a hold of your yummy German cakes, so you’ll need to do your best to fend them off using your mini-guns, and make good use of the various temporary upgrades you can utilise.

As you progress through the waves you can add extra crew members by shooting certain power ups, and these will help you to protect the cakes against the invading aliens. As you gain control of these additional teammates, keeping the hordes at bay becomes a little easier, with more firepower being directed their way.

There’s not much of a story to be had, instead having an arcade styled gameplay experience, where the aim is just to last as long as possible, gaining as high of a score as you can. Enemies only affect you (in the sense that it could end your run) when they actually hit your baumkuchen, so it’s best to focus on enemies heading towards them, rather than any that are potentially going to impact with empty spaces.

The pixel art style is cute, if a little plain, with each of your little team members differing only in hair colour, and there isn’t a whole lot of variety to the enemies themselves. There are no bosses to be found, instead you just have unlimited waves of fairly standard enemies, with only a few different types being available. Most are pretty similar in terms of how hard (or easy) they are to defeat, however as more and more of them take over the screen, this is where it will become harder to control. The soundtrack consists of little retro sounding tracks, and whilst they’re not terrible, they do tend to become really repetitive - especially when combined with the potentially endless nature of the game.

It’s a cute little budget-friendly title at just £4.99 on Xbox, and that’s good if you’re just looking for an arcade styled game to pass some time. Having some bosses at the end of certain waves would have given the game a bit more meat, as having endless waves of similarly levelled enemies (just with them growing in number over time) doesn’t feel like it offers enough variety to keep things fresh and interesting - so you’ll likely find that once you’ve unlocked all of the achievements (easily done in a single run), you’ll close down the game, never to return.