Does this count as mascot horror? Technically, it seems like a business mascot that is setting out to kill you, but I’m not sure if these monstrosities are supposed to be evil mascots or just weirdly cutesy eldritch beings bent on devouring children. Well, either way, check out our Cakey’s Twisted Bakery review to see if this is a worthy indie horror title to add to your collection or yet another one for the bargain bin.
What Is Cakey’s Twisted Bakery?
If you’ve ever played Happy’s Humble Burger Farm and any other mascot horror title, then you’ll probably have a good idea of what to expect from Cakey’s Twisted Bakery. It’s a first-person stealth horror game where you’ve been kidnapped and brought to an evil bakery. With the life of your little brother on the line, you have to defeat the demonic mascots of the bakery and try your best to free him and the other trapped children.
As you explore the bakery, you’ll find a kid-friendly oven, six different ingredients (in random locations), and a bunch of notes that give you the narrative portions of the game. You must make your way between the different ingredient stations, baking cakes, then using the right cake to throw at your enemies in hope that you can take them down. After defeating three such monsters, you’ll be free to find your brother and escape the nightmare.
Welcome to the Boogie-Man Bakery
Cakey’s Twisted Bakery gives you very little information to start out with. You’re given a torch and basically told you need to bake pies to kill baddies, but beyond that, your goal and how you actually go about doing things is entirely up to you to figure out. Personally, this meant I ended up relying on Steam guides and other players to figure out how the world works, but your mileage may vary. Still, the mechanics are incredibly simple, so even if you go in completely fresh, you’ll probably pick it up relatively easily.
As you start out the game, you’re given a few minutes before the first monster spawns into the game, giving you plenty of time to get your bearings. You can also use this time to gather as many of the ingredients that you’ll need to bake cakes for the rest of the round. In fact, you can completely do this between each monster if you feel like it, turning the entire thing into a complete crap shoot.
Simplicity Itself
You shouldn’t necessarily take away from this review that Cakey’s Twisted Bakery having simple mechanics makes it bad. The gameplay is pretty easy to grasp, and as a result, you can get into it easily. That said, if you’re looking for a deep experience, you’re certainly not going to find one here. All three monsters you have to face follow different AI, but at the end of the day, you’re pretty much doing the same thing: run around grabbing ingredients to shove into the pie-maker and then make enough pies to take out your enemies.
Unfortunately, the game is also pretty damn exploitable. The different monsters only spawn when you cross certain thresholds, and you can make a bunch of pies thanks to the pie-warmer that’s opposite the baking machine. So, if you just make sure to not trigger the spawn, you can simply fill the pie-warmer with 10 of each type of pie, then you can just trigger the spawn and spam them with pies till they go down. In fairness, this doesn’t always work with Cakey since the rooms that spawn him sometimes contain ingredients, but it makes the last encounter entirely too trivial, but only if you want it to be.
A World of Cakey Delights
Visually, Cakey’s Twisted Bakery does a good job. While it’s certainly simple and short, the developers clearly put a lot of thought and time into making the entire game visually consistent, and it ends up being the best part of the experience. There are pastel colours everywhere, and of course, you’ve got bits of gore and viscera stuffed into boxes and corners. Some of the ingredients also have a disgusting, wet sheen that genuinely makes them feel like a flesh cube or ground-up bones.
The music and sound design are also pretty top-notch. The introductions to each monster are accompanied by some apt stings, and the sound effects as you explore the nearly empty bakery can be pretty eerie, at least until Cakey shows up with his discordant theme tune that makes him really easy to hear coming. Overall, it’s a visual and aural treat, and that alone might make it worth the price of admission for you.
The Final Thought
Cakey’s Twisted Bakery offers something unique for mascot horror fans, but only in terms of the visual style on offer. In terms of gameplay, it’s basically the same as any other run-of-the-mill first-person indie horror/stealth game. You run around trying to stay hidden from monsters while collecting the ‘stuff’ you need to either kill the monsters, or escape, or both; in this case, both. The game isn’t anything overtly special, but it’s also bite-sized and cheap-as-chips, so it’s certainly going to be worth your time if you’re into the genre and want a brief experience to tide you over between re-watches of the FNAF lore playlist on YouTube.
Developer: TinyMinds
Publisher: Ultimate Games
Platforms: PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series S/X, PC
Release Date: 8th January 2026
Gaming Respawn’s copy of Cakey’s Twisted Bakery was provided by the publisher.
