Hearkening back to the days of the platformer craze, Super Perils of Baking almost seems like an unopened time capsule of a 16-bit platformer, despite being released rather recently. A love letter to many classic titles, Super Perils of Baking incorporates many bits from other games into a soufflé of its own- but the flavor of gameplay it offers might seem a bit too familiar at times. A lot of inspiration is drawn from other sources, but shortcomings with execution keep Super Perils of Baking just shy of being a memorable platformer on its own.
Super Perils of Baking begins as many old fashioned platformers or 16-bit adventures do, with a few images stringing together a story for the main character and villain and how they relate to the story. In this case, the main characters are two brothers of great cooking skill. Their entire family is of culinary pedigree, and they look to achieve the same level of status as their other family members through baking. While both brothers are incredibly skilled, the brother that works a slight bit harder comes out as #1 in every competition or class ranking. In a fit of envy, the other brother seeks out a possessed baking hat that would give him the skill he lacks to surpass his brother.
Unsurprisingly, the hat possesses him and he begins creating sweet monsters to take over the world and be the best baker. As the virtuous, hardworking brother; your job is to topple your brother and bring him back to his senses. While this can seem like a deep running plot, the gameplay and levels do a very poor job of maintaining any relation to the main plot. As a platformer with minimal dialogue, there is very little to remind you of the main story aside from boss fights every 10 levels in a similar fashion to Bowser castles. What could have been expanded with some NPC dialogue in between levels or even in scrolling shop dialogue was ultimately lost in favor of passing remarks before and after boss fights.
While there were missed opportunities with the story, the gameplay arguably attempted to do a bit too much. This game is either a completionist’s dream or nightmare, depending on the lens. Every level has a secret, the letters B A K E spread throughout, and plenty of cookies to give you points towards your life bar. The game functions on a pseudo life system, with hearts and a cooking hat marking how many hits you can take. The character changes as you get more hearts as well, going from beardless, to bearded, to bearded with a chef’s hat. Once you have the chef’s hat, you can throw whisks at varying angles, almost exactly like Castlevania’s arcing axes. With the chef’s hat as well, collecting a full bar of points gives you an extra hat to drop and bring you directly to the chef’s hat stage, so the easiest way to manipulate this is to hold onto an extra hat, use it at a nearly full bar, and grab two or three cookies to get another free hat. This is especially useful since the levels can feel incredibly long, much longer than what would be expected from a normal platformer. This is a testament to the developer’s devotion, as there is a lot hidden in each level, which I can respect.
The main issue comes with the flow of the levels, as there is a conflict of interests when it comes not only to player speed and precise platforming, but with the enemy placement and avoiding certain obstacles. Even in earlier stages, a bad screen switch can almost set you up for demise or a necessary damage boosting run while trying to time your invincibility. In later stages, especially the secret stages, the platforming becomes dismal. With a sprint that activates midair and a landing that maintains momentum as well and slides a bit, precise landing feels more luck based than challenging.
Overall, Super Perils of Baking feels like it had heart in the right places, but lacked the experience to execute concepts as thoroughly as it wanted to. A bunch of mechanics felt mishmashed in this game and didn’t really fit well together, and there were times where it felt easier to just abuse damage boosting with the extra chef’s hat than to actually engage with the levels. After about 15 levels it just felt like playing the same level over and over, and didn’t necessarily feel rewarding to seek out any extra secrets or hidden words throughout the level. The secret levels, while cool, were much in the same vein. Points for effort, but this isn’t a title to recommend over classic titles that are easy to access with Nintendo Switch Online or PlayStation Now.
Score: 6 out of 10
Reviewed on PlayStation 5