Gamer reviews for Pancake – The Game
Flipping Out With Pancake - The Game
From the creative mind behind Sometimes You Die - a huge app gaming hit of 2014 - comes Pancake The Game. Brought to you by Dutch designer Philipp Stollenmayer, Pancake The game is a tribute to games everywhere that are so simple, it's addicting.
The game is available only on the App Store and can be enjoyed absolutely free. No money will leave your pocket for this gaming experience, however, there is an ad banner endlessly cycling at the bottom of the screen for about 20 minutes, so it does become ad-free if you are not a quitter.
Pancake is rated for ages 4+, and while it is possible for children to tap away at that frying pan, succeeding at this game takes some finesse. You will essentially play as the arm of a well-muscled man holding a flat griddle that ever so slightly slants downward to the right. An egg will hatch a thick, delicious pancake directly into the center of your pan and there is a good chance that will be the last time you will ever see the thing exactly in the center of the pan ever again. You will tap the screen to flip the pancake and will immediately invent new expletives to shout as you attempt to catch said pancake, and then repeat. Your score will be tallied for every time you manage to successfully toss and catch the pancake and every time you beat your top score, your brawny avatar will unflinchingly receive a tattoo of your accomplishment.
The graphics are very, very basic, and there are no background tunes to keep you humming. The successful flip of a pancake elicits a snare drum tap and other than the delicate hatching of the rare "pancake egg" and the sporadic whir of a possessed tattoo gun, the game is silent. The graphics are also relatively static, however, leaving the pancake on the griddle and a few seconds of successful flipping will gradually darken it.
The game can be played back to back for the rest of your (or your phone battery's) life uninterrupted, so that has to increase the amount of time that some cyber-chefs will keep playing. There are a few achievements to accomplish and you can compare your skill with the rest of the world in the game center which adds a bit of excitement, but over all many people will find this game only a temporary distraction. It requires a lot of attention and the slightest misstep will send that floppy pancake straight off of the screen. It is about as complicated as simplicity could possibly be.
All in all, this game is not for everyone. It takes a good ten minutes of gamplay to get your score past ten and after that, all bets are off. The physics are a little wonky, the same actions will not always get the same reactions from the pancake and this makes gameplay frustrating. It is reasonably entertaining for what it is and it is free.