There’s something special about a game that’s as attractive to parents as it is to their four-year-old child. That’s what Cake Bash is all about: accessible entertainment that puts a smile on the faces of the whole family.
But it’s more than just a wholesome distraction for casuals and young’uns; having played a few rounds myself, I can also confirm that running around as sugary treats smothering ourselves in delicious toppings also had a bunch of 30-year-old men giggling, too!
The premise is just so wonderfully silly, and it’s super fun to actually control. No wonder, then, that I’ve been keen to speak with the team at High Tea Frog about their unique little party game ever since.
Luckily for me, publisher Coatsink was able to organize a quick get together with High Tea Frog’s technical artist and director, Laura Hutton. All very well-timed, too, with this week’s announcement of a new brilliantly named battle royale mode called Fork Knife: Gateau Royale, as well as the announcement of a playable demo coming next week for Steam Summer Games Fest.
Here’s what Laura had to say about conceptualizing and designing Cake Bash, developing for different consoles, life as an indie studio after working at some of the industry’s big studios, and much more:
Senior Editor Alex Gibson: Cake Bash looks like an accessible sort of video game that anybody can hop into and have fun. Presumably, this was one of the core pillars of your design philosophy when developing the game? What else has been important in guiding Cake Bash’s design?
Laura Hutton: You’re right! We wanted to make it fun for everyone – at events we’ve seen parents tempted into a few matches with their children, even when they’re not usually interested in playing!
We’ve also been inspired by 90s party games. I still dig out Mario Party and Pokemon Stadium every time I visit my family. What makes them so special? Of course, nostalgia is a big factor, but I think there’s much more to it – even if you lose you have fun.
The scenarios and characters are enjoyable to look at, exciting to play, and there’s always the potential to get better with time and practice. We’re still finding new ways to play after all these years, and it’s something we wanted to explore in Cake Bash too.
We’ve woven skill and daft characters together in each of our games, and I hope players will want to learn how to get really good at them!
Alex: Did you find it challenging to strike a balance between building an accessible game and one that features enough depth to keep more experienced players interested?
Laura Hutton: We worked hard on making the combat feel good. One challenge we battled with was that something which was really satisfying for the attacker, (like landing a fully charged bash), felt unfair to the player on the receiving end. It was a constant balancing act but we ended up in a place we’re happy with after tweaking timings and values.
We have throwable weapons, a chargeable uppercut, a dash and a combo punch. All of these elements work well together and we’ve had some really intense matches! The game is much more complex than it looks at face value if you want to get really involved.
In saying that, some of our players at events have been as young as four, and they seem to enjoy just running around as a mad looking cake. The flailing arms, funny faces and sweeties are more than enough for them!
Alex: Talk to us about the stage/level designs in Cake Bash. There’s a lot going on in the background there, and it all looks fantastic. Each stage appears to have its own fun theme centered around some sort of kitchen appliance. How did you brainstorm these concepts, and were there some that were left on the table?
Laura Hutton: Heh, the table – one of our arenas is a patio table with a hungry pigeon! We actually built most of our levels around the central mechanics. We wanted them to be as different as possible to play, so we based them around unique concepts – boss fight (the Patio pigeon), disappearing floor (the Birthday cake). I built each of the level’s art assets around the core design.
They’re all based on real-life locations, to fit with the drawn-to-life theme. We had a couple of ideas that didn’t make it, like a pull out airplane table, a family barbeque and a sushi restaurant just for cakes! You never know, if people enjoy the game we would love to add more in the future.
Alex: Cake Bash’s various modes are presumably inspired by others that have featured in games gone by, but given the game’s premise is quite unique, what’s the focus testing process been like in regards to finding out what works and what doesn’t? Have you been working with specific focus groups, have you been experimenting at conventions like EGX, etc?
Laura Hutton: Our Publisher, Coatsink, has been taking the game to events like EGX and Bitsummit where we’ve had loads of valuable feedback. Player input has been so important in shaping our design – after only 4 months of development we took Cake Bash to a small local event, and quickly realized that some of our mechanics weren’t as fun as we thought and players were getting frustrated.
We made a list after watching them play, and after a focused week of hard work, the game was moving in a much better direction. We’re releasing our demo on June 9th on Steam, so I’m really looking forward to hearing what people think!
All in all, though, we just make what we think is fun. Some things look better on paper than they play- we’ve always been quick to iterate on designs and try as many new things as we can before settling on the best option. The amount of game ideas we prototyped and scrapped is huge, but we think that’s the best way to make games!
Because our team is tiny, so there’s no way we could make as much content as a bigger team could, so we’ve been very selective in deciding what we’ll ship with. We could have made quite a few more modes but the quality would have taken a dip. It’s definitely quality over quantity from us, but everyone seems to have a different favorite minigame or main game, so there’s something for everyone!
Alex: Speaking of game modes, Fork Knife has just been revealed, and it’s amusingly inspired by Fortnite’s battle royale mode. It seems as though the last-man-standing loop is fast-becoming a must-have for all multiplayer games; how did you adapt it to make sense for Cake Bash? For example, how did you approach design decisions such as the scale of the level, the complexity of the mechanics (if you’ve added any specifically for the mode), etc?
Laura Hutton: Fork Knife was too perfect an opportunity for a cake pun, so we built a whole minigame around the name. The tagline is ‘Gateau Royale’. We’ve tried to distill the last-man-standing theme from bigger games into a bite-sized laugh.