Cake Mania is a Time Management Game series created by Sandlot Games.
Jill Evans grew up helping in her grandparents' bakery. With her help, the shop thrived, and her grandfather soon sent her off to culinary school. When she graduated and got back, however, she discovered to her horror that the bakery was shut down and the land bought off. From there, Jill resolved to open her own bakery and one day buy back the deed to reopen the Evans' Bakery.
The games in the series are:
- Cake Mania
- Cake Mania: Back to the Bakery: A mini expansion focusing on Jill helping her grandparents win the Cake Mania Bake-Off completion for a chance to win a Hawaiian cruise.
- Cake Mania 2: Jill's Next Adventure: A choose your own path game where players decide what Jill does and where she bakes. Will she find fame, fortune, or perhaps even love?
- Cake Mania 3: The day before her wedding to Jack, a broken Time Bender sends Jill's grandparents and friends off to various time periods. Now Jill has to set off and find them.
- Cake Mania: Main Street: Following the opening of a new mega mart in Bakersville, Jill's old hangouts are shutting down. With help from her friends, Jill sets out to drive up business on Main Street and make it thriving again.
- Cake Mania: Lights Camera Action!: A movie director has decided to film his latest hit in Bakersville! Now Jill and Jack have a new set of customers to fufill, along with the new addition of their family coming along.
- Cake Mania: To The Max: Jill flashbacks to her time as a high school student and the events that made her decide to become a baker.
Tropes for the series include:
- Audience Participation: Before "Lights Camera Action" was released, Sandlot Games held a poll for potential baby names for Jill and Jack's new baby. When she ends up having twins, the most popular ones, Oliver and Rose, are chosen.
- Cutting Off the Branches: 3 seems to confirm two endings are canon to the end of 2: Jill getting engaged to Jack and her having traveled in time to the future, receiving a Time Bender in the process.
- Evolving Title Screen: As Jill complete various endings in 2, the trophies she gains from them are shown on the title screen.
- Faint in Shock: Jack does this when Jill's water breaks, then again when he learns Jill had twins.
- Foreshadowing:
- In Back To The Bakery, the new Uncle Sam seasonal character constantly shows up out of season. By last level, Jill realizes the reason is because Sam is actually the judge for the Bake-Off, hence the visits.
- Throughout Main Street, there are subtle hints that Jill is pregnant in between levels.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: Since Jill is pregnant during Lights Camera Action!, once enough levels are finished Jack ends up taking over as player character during the bakery section. From there, Jill is just in charge of hand decorating cakes.
- Multiple Endings: 2 has six of them depending on the location players chose for their fourth bakery:
- Moon Base: Jill's work allows aliens and earth to co-exist in peace.
- 2112: Thanks to Jill's efforts to reintroducing cakes to the future, the citizens give her a Time Bender so she can return back to her own time. She however wonders if she can visit anywhere else in time...
- Tokyo Film Studio: Jill wins the competition and is granted her own baking show.
- Arctic Circle: Realizing the Azure Penguins aren't eating their fertility pills, Jill hides some in cakes so they could eat them. The plan works, and she saves them from extinction.
- Big City Rooftop: Jill heads home, realizing her family and friends are much more important. Her grandparents agree with her.
- Underwater Aquarium: Jill ends up falling for Jack over the year, and at the very end he proposes to her. She accepts.
- New Job as the Plot Demands: Risha has a habit of running several different business throughout the series. From running a bakery to a flower shop and then a fashion boutique for the movie being held in town. When Director Be ends up fleeing town, she decides to take over as director for the movie.
- Noodle Implements: Be's vision of "Pride and Prejudice" includes aliens, yetis, time travel, zombies, martial arts, samurai, and dinosaurs.
- Prima Donna Director: Director Michel Be is this. He's constantly diving into budget for stuff, slashes employees' salaries but keeps his own up, and causes mayhem across town creating his "vision".
- Running Gag: Lights Camera Action! has people suggesting baby names for Jill.
- Sequel Hook: Main Street ends with the reveal that Jill and Jack are having a baby soon.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: After the town locals kept complaining about Be's antics, the director decides to skip town. When he's found, he says he left because he ran out of budget for his ideas.
- Troubled Production: In-universe, Be's movie version of "Pride and Prejudice" becomes this due to his constant disregard of the locals, him not paying the crew, and how much of a far cry it is from the original. Once Risha takes over as director, she makes it a more truer adaption of the original story.
- Wacky Cravings: As part of the foreshadowing for Jill's pregnancy, Tiny mentions she placed in a special order for a maki filled with eel, olives, peanut butter and Milk Duds.
- When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Or cake is in this. Jill has to rescue her loved ones trapped across time who are stuck in various situation, but luckily for her, all time periods are in need of good cakes.
- Whole Episode Flashback: To The Max is primarily set in the eighties.
