If you’re quick about it you’ll get an extra tip and some additional customer happiness, which incentivize you to work as efficiently as possible. Gameplay is a straightforward management kind of game-vaguely calling to mind the style of Overcooked-wherein you constantly battle the timer to get food orders out. Given the origins of this title, there’s only so much you can expect out of these cutscenes, but they still come across as being rather cheap and uninspired, and clearly not written by the show’s creators. Characters basically just show up in stilted, voiceless dialogue scenes between levels and exchange some banal conversation that fits their personalities, then you move on to the next thing. There’s a story (sort of) stringing the levels together, but it’s nowhere near the quality of writing that the show was once known for. SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off sees you taking control of various characters from the popular show and tasks you with getting behind the grill to serve up goods to an endless barrage of customers.

Believe it or not, it’s still an enjoyable game-especially considering that the microtransactions have been stripped out-but the shallow and repetitive design keeps it from having any real staying power. SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off was always going to be a tough sell to the Switch audience, then, as this is unmistakably a mobile game that adheres to all the stereotypical trappings. And though the mobile space actually accounts for the lion’s share of the profits raked in by the game industry year over year, this monetary growth is seen by many to come at the cost of good game design. Though not always deserved, mobile games have long since obtained a reputation for being rather shallow and money-grubbing affairs. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

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