Going into this, I was hoping for something similar to the old SpongeBob Diner Dash experienced. I have very vague memories of playing it as a kid, and figured this might be similar. Going in however, jesus this game is bad.
First the animations, everybody here looks so.. bizarre. I have no real way to describe it besides it just looks off, like it's close but not quite the actual SpongeBob artstyle.
Next though is the dialogue, and barely any of this feels like something the characters would say. It all feels ridiculously scriptwritten and completely unnatural, and made me cringe to read.
The first and only story mode I went through was the one with pancakes(???) where they set up a shack next to SpongeBob's house to sell pancakes, because customers don't want Krabby Pattys for breakfast. I found if very confusing how we start off with pancakes of all things, when we couldn't have at least had a tutorial with the iconic Krabby Pattys? I mean, have pancakes even ever appeared in the show?
Anyways, coming to the actual gameplay, this feels ridiculously slow and easy. Throughout my short time playing, which was roughly 30 levels, this never increased majorly in difficulty either. It definitely feels like it was made for a young audience, which is to be expected, but by god these microtransactions are crazy.
Okay, so first, let's talk about currencies. There are 4 currencies. Coins are the most common, and easiest to get through levels, used for the upgrades and all that. Happy points are used for the League system they have ingame to get people to play for longer in order to get pitiful rewards. I chose not to connect via Facebook so this could be why, but nobody in the leagues were even real people to begin with. Side note, if this is aimed at young children, why have an option to even link with Facebook? Anywho, currency 3 is called Krabby dollars. These are used to purchase cosmetics ingame to upgrade the character you choose to serve and cook with, and are only earned in two ways. One, you complete the story section, which remember, is 30 levels! You get a pitiful number of these, not enough to buy literally ANYTHING for anyone, which just rubs in the fact the ONLY OTHER WAY to get these is by paying for them. Finally, we have Gems, the premiere premium currency. Now I will give them credit, it isn't stupidly hard to get Gems organically through gameplay, but it is super tedious and incredibly annoying. The easiest way you'll find is by completing "achievements", which are done by upgrading your place, in this case being the pancake shop. Now there are 3 sections to this, that being kitchen upgrades, interior upgrades, and decor. Kitchen upgrades and interior upgrades, funnily enough, use gems to even upgrade in the first place, making this method pretty redundant. Your reward for upgrading these is obviously better performance in the kitchen, as well as Fame Points, a complrtely useless metric only added to give you a slight sense of gratification once you hit it's goal, get your 2 gems as a reward, and restart it with a higher goal. The other method of getting gems is literally watching ads. For ONE GEM A PIECE. I am not joking, for a full 30 second Mistplay ad, in which I had to click FOUR SEPERATE X ICONS, I get one gem. And the best part is, I can't rapid fire these ads. No, for some godforsaken reason, they have a 40 second cooldown between them?? And that's not all, if you watch enough of them, it actually DISABLES the ads, practically FORCING you to buy more. Absolutely ridiculous. Now, to make all of this easier on you, not only can you buy currency, but (and I will give them credit for this,) it seems any purchase you make removes the intrusive ads from gameplay. And trust me, they are intrusive.
After every single level, without fail, there will be a 5 to 15 second ad. Every time. Not a single time without one. It's insane. But even better then all these microtransactions and ads clogging the gameplay loop, there's also a subscription model, oh boy! Yes yes, for TEN DOLLARS A WEEK, YOU CAN GET SOME MINOR BENEFITS. A WEEK??? Absolutely mind-boggling. What I find funny was when I actually started playing, I could increase my rewards after a level by 30% if I watched an ad, which I thought wasn't too bad of an implementation, but when I got on again later that night, poof! Gone! No ad option! ONLY the SUBSCRIPTION option!
Oh don't worry, that's not all. If you want to get Gems, but can't get your hands on mommy's credit card, don't worry, because you can get them for free through other means than watching ads. That's right, they implemented a "feature" where you can fill out extremely sketchy sweepstakes with a bunch of personal information, as well as play other mobile games you don't like for extremely long periods of time, all for a handful of gems! Isn't this great kids, I love wasting my time and giving my data to strangers on the internet!
And as if ALL of this predatory behavior wasn't enough, they have a daily reward system. Each day you play, you get this like piggy bank coin thing? After I think 7 days of consecutive play, you can either choose to get the pitiful free reward, that being 200 coins and 2 gems (to put in perspective, I've gotten as much as 1850 coins in a level before), or, and here's the best part, you can pay $3.99 FOR 5X MORE REWARDS. ABSOLUTELY INSANE. THE AMOUNT OF MONEY HUNGRY PRACTICES THEY STUFF DOWN YOUR THROAT IS MIND BLOWING. I HAVE NO WORDS.
Tl;dr, don't play, extremely predatory, reptitive, and boring. Easy 1/5. I only won't put .5/5 because while it is terrible, the game at least functions in the actual gameplay department, which I will give them the half star props for.
First the animations, everybody here looks so.. bizarre. I have no real way to describe it besides it just looks off, like it's close but not quite the actual SpongeBob artstyle.
Next though is the dialogue, and barely any of this feels like something the characters would say. It all feels ridiculously scriptwritten and completely unnatural, and made me cringe to read.
The first and only story mode I went through was the one with pancakes(???) where they set up a shack next to SpongeBob's house to sell pancakes, because customers don't want Krabby Pattys for breakfast. I found if very confusing how we start off with pancakes of all things, when we couldn't have at least had a tutorial with the iconic Krabby Pattys? I mean, have pancakes even ever appeared in the show?
Anyways, coming to the actual gameplay, this feels ridiculously slow and easy. Throughout my short time playing, which was roughly 30 levels, this never increased majorly in difficulty either. It definitely feels like it was made for a young audience, which is to be expected, but by god these microtransactions are crazy.
Okay, so first, let's talk about currencies. There are 4 currencies. Coins are the most common, and easiest to get through levels, used for the upgrades and all that. Happy points are used for the League system they have ingame to get people to play for longer in order to get pitiful rewards. I chose not to connect via Facebook so this could be why, but nobody in the leagues were even real people to begin with. Side note, if this is aimed at young children, why have an option to even link with Facebook? Anywho, currency 3 is called Krabby dollars. These are used to purchase cosmetics ingame to upgrade the character you choose to serve and cook with, and are only earned in two ways. One, you complete the story section, which remember, is 30 levels! You get a pitiful number of these, not enough to buy literally ANYTHING for anyone, which just rubs in the fact the ONLY OTHER WAY to get these is by paying for them. Finally, we have Gems, the premiere premium currency. Now I will give them credit, it isn't stupidly hard to get Gems organically through gameplay, but it is super tedious and incredibly annoying. The easiest way you'll find is by completing "achievements", which are done by upgrading your place, in this case being the pancake shop. Now there are 3 sections to this, that being kitchen upgrades, interior upgrades, and decor. Kitchen upgrades and interior upgrades, funnily enough, use gems to even upgrade in the first place, making this method pretty redundant. Your reward for upgrading these is obviously better performance in the kitchen, as well as Fame Points, a complrtely useless metric only added to give you a slight sense of gratification once you hit it's goal, get your 2 gems as a reward, and restart it with a higher goal. The other method of getting gems is literally watching ads. For ONE GEM A PIECE. I am not joking, for a full 30 second Mistplay ad, in which I had to click FOUR SEPERATE X ICONS, I get one gem. And the best part is, I can't rapid fire these ads. No, for some godforsaken reason, they have a 40 second cooldown between them?? And that's not all, if you watch enough of them, it actually DISABLES the ads, practically FORCING you to buy more. Absolutely ridiculous. Now, to make all of this easier on you, not only can you buy currency, but (and I will give them credit for this,) it seems any purchase you make removes the intrusive ads from gameplay. And trust me, they are intrusive.
After every single level, without fail, there will be a 5 to 15 second ad. Every time. Not a single time without one. It's insane. But even better then all these microtransactions and ads clogging the gameplay loop, there's also a subscription model, oh boy! Yes yes, for TEN DOLLARS A WEEK, YOU CAN GET SOME MINOR BENEFITS. A WEEK??? Absolutely mind-boggling. What I find funny was when I actually started playing, I could increase my rewards after a level by 30% if I watched an ad, which I thought wasn't too bad of an implementation, but when I got on again later that night, poof! Gone! No ad option! ONLY the SUBSCRIPTION option!
Oh don't worry, that's not all. If you want to get Gems, but can't get your hands on mommy's credit card, don't worry, because you can get them for free through other means than watching ads. That's right, they implemented a "feature" where you can fill out extremely sketchy sweepstakes with a bunch of personal information, as well as play other mobile games you don't like for extremely long periods of time, all for a handful of gems! Isn't this great kids, I love wasting my time and giving my data to strangers on the internet!
And as if ALL of this predatory behavior wasn't enough, they have a daily reward system. Each day you play, you get this like piggy bank coin thing? After I think 7 days of consecutive play, you can either choose to get the pitiful free reward, that being 200 coins and 2 gems (to put in perspective, I've gotten as much as 1850 coins in a level before), or, and here's the best part, you can pay $3.99 FOR 5X MORE REWARDS. ABSOLUTELY INSANE. THE AMOUNT OF MONEY HUNGRY PRACTICES THEY STUFF DOWN YOUR THROAT IS MIND BLOWING. I HAVE NO WORDS.
Tl;dr, don't play, extremely predatory, reptitive, and boring. Easy 1/5. I only won't put .5/5 because while it is terrible, the game at least functions in the actual gameplay department, which I will give them the half star props for.