Parents' Guide to My Bakery Empire

Players can be creative when decorating products in this bakery business game, but the constant ads and simple play may spoil these digital sweets. My Bakery Empire makes an effort to shorten the steps typically involved in baking, presumably to speed things up; ingredients are essentially all dumped in one bowl before anything is mixed, and milk is poured automatically into smoothies without being measured (or even involving players in the process). The overall experience, though, can still feel somewhat slow because the individual steps take some time. Players tap on the screen to peel each side of a banana, and then drag a knife back and forth to slice it into seven pieces. A sifter has to be shaken back and forth until all the flour in it is gone.

The abundance of ads doesn't help; players are also redirected back to the main menu between cooking rounds, which draws gameplay out even more. In addition, the developers missed some opportunities to incorporate subtle life lessons into the game. Players aren't given much leeway during the baking process to overcook items or use too much of an ingredient, so instead of learning to follow specific directions, they're basically just tapping or dragging their finger across the screen -- which isn't too exciting after a while. Between that, the slow pace, and the often similar steps for different items (for example, you cut a lot of strawberries), My Bakery Empire would seem best-suited for younger kids. But even those players may find some of the gameplay to be either confusing or simplistic.