Make it! Taiyaki

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Split-Screen)

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Review:

Make It! Taiyaki is an Arcade-style game released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2024, in which players… make taiyaki, the Japanese snack that’s a fried pastry filled with sweet bean paste, in the shape of a fish. Players must go through multiple steps, aiming to make as much of it as possible, ideally cooked just right.

The presentation in this game uses cartoony 3D visuals for the food and the cooking surface (in this case, three large pressed with a series of fish-shaped molds in them), backed by traditional-sounding Japanese music. It all works well enough and maintains a lighthearted tone.

For the gameplay, players must put each taiyaki through multiple steps, aiming to do each step at the right time, as indicated by that taiyaki smoking. And to its credit, I have to respect that I feel like I at least have a vague idea of how to cook taiyaki now, at least provided that I have the ingredients and the recipe for the pastry. Oh, and one of those fish mold things.

However, on the other hand… this is really just a glorified minigame. It’s repetitive and fairly simple, and while I think it would make for a good minigame if it were one of the minigames in a larger Party Game, just this game on its own is going to get old for players very quickly.

It’s a shame that Make It! Taiyaki’s creators separated this game from the numerous other games they’ve released in this series, because if they were joined together they could have made for a solid Party Game. But as-is, this is far too one-note to be worth bothering with, even with its relatively low $3 price tag.

tl;dr – Make It! Taiyaki is an Arcade-style game where players make taiyaki, the Japanese fried pastry in the shape of a fish. This game would be great as a minigame in a larger Party Game, but on its own it’s far too monotonous, and you’ll grow tired of it soon after starting.

Grade: C-

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