Y’all know my opinions on Stardew Valley. So when my friends suggest a cute game and compare it to Stardew Valley, I am there for it. And who doesn’t want to live out the dream of running a cute little bakery, making pastries, talking to ghosts, and petting cats? Oh yeah, forgot to mention: the bakery is kinda haunted.

Lemon Cake was made by Éloïse Laroche (@EloiseGames) and released on Steam and Itch.io on February 18, 2021. With a couple quality of life and content updates since launch, this cozy baking sim combines both farming and time management elements to make a sweet story about reviving a haunted bakery, and putting the ghost to rest by training as an apprentice baker. Ultimately, you want to make enough money and get enough experience to fully upgrade the downtrodden bakery, and make Miss Bonbon’s famous (and titular) Lemon Cake recipe. But what do you actually do?

Each in-game day features a couple of timed, and untimed, sections. First is the morning prep, before you open the bakery for the day. The in game clock is paused, and you can spend as much time as you need to clean up any messes in the bakery, water plants, pet cats, clean chickens, and any other chores that are easiest done before a crowd shows up. You can also prep and bake some early pastries, but with limited counter space you can only make so many without knowing what exactly people will order in one day. And with that, it’s time to open shop, and the clock begins. 

Here’s the time crunch, and the part of the game that drove my anxiety up a wall. The clock starts as soon as you open the bakery, and customers can start filing in and ordering pastries and cooked treats. Much like Diner Dash, and other customer service style games, customers have a patience meter, affecting their happiness and how much they’ll tip you when they pay. Wait long enough, or severely mess up their order, and out they go, presumably to go write a scathing review on Lemon Cake Yelp, taking their money with them. No big deal, right? Well, it’s not just the pastries you have to keep your eye on, as the only staff member in the establishment initially. So in addition to baking and ordering, cleaning tables is a must, as customers won’t sit at a dirty table, they’ll just quietly leave. Oh, and did I mention that everything is grown in the greenhouse out back as well? You better keep those plants watered if you want strawberries and blueberries for your bread throughout the day. Eggs and milk are courtesy of the cow and chickens in the greenhouse as well, and they aren’t ‘set and forget’ type creatures, also wanting pets, care, and cleaning throughout the day. Now do all these things all at once, across three screens, for an incredibly frantic 4-5 minutes. Seriously, after playing for a while my shoulders and hands hurt from holding so much tension in them, trying to run around and do everything at once. 

And yet? It’s really fun? Things always feel moments away from failure, so the victory is that much sweeter. Doing more earns you more, whether it’s experience for new recipes, or cash for more complex recipes, and their associated exotic ingredients added to your roster. Cash upgrades also improve your kitchen as a whole, from fixing up broken ovens to adding sprinklers to water your plants. A cute, sweet game, but not really one I can relax with, as I might with other casual games.  But when you need a little thrill, a little fear, a little competition… that’s an ice cold drink on a hot day. Just make sure to take a step back every once in a while, or you’ll get burnt!