Waku Waku Sweets

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Waku Waku Sweets, released on Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch in 2018, is an Arcade-style game in the vein of the Cooking Mama series. In this game, players take the role of a young lady starting a job in a sweets shop, who starts to learn how to make yummy treats with the help of her new coworkers (and a catlike “sweets fairy”).

The presentation in this game is delightfully adorable, making use of anime-style 2D art for the game’s characters, and decent-looking cartoony representations of the food you’ll be preparing. This is all backed by a fittingly saccharine and bouncy synthesized soundtrack. It’s nothing truly spectacular, but it works well enough for the game.

Unfortunately, what doesn’t work for this game is the absolutely terrible, broken controls. Players have the option to play with more traditional controls or motion controls, but both seem almost automated in how accurately they do the tasks on-screen, removing any semblance of challenge. You may occasionally find the controls unresponsive at times, but the game is kind enough to pause everything until you hold the L or R button to signal the game to start detecting what you’re doing, which seems to work out to “if the player does anything, complete the task successfully”.

There are some other elements to Waku Waku Sweets, including the ability to purchase new recipes, and some dating game-like elements, but I hardly see the point of getting into that when the core gameplay is so terribly broken. Even if you’re craving a dessert-themed take on the Cooking Mama formula, do not buy Waku Waku Sweets – this recipe might look tasty, but it’s made with rotten ingredients.

tl;dr – Waku Waku Sweets is an Arcade-style game in the vein of the Cooking Mama series. The presentation here is adorable and inviting, but the gameplay is absolutely terrible, with controls that basically do everything for you, leaving zero challenge. As a result, there’s no reason to play this game. Skip it.

Grade: D-

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