Mmm… donuts. Who doesn’t love these glutinous, gluttonous sugar snacks, and what better way to celebrate their visceral delights than by slathering a big dose of intellectual icing on top?
Freshly Frosted is reminiscent of the Lines series of ‘A to B’ puzzlers. Your basic challenge is to join one point in a grid to another, then do this with multiple simultaneous connections, then with as many modifying mechanics as the developers can conjure up. Here, your playfield is a donut factory, complete with conveyors to transport the goodies, and all manner of gadgets to assist them on their way.
The game starts simply and slowly, the task being to guide your pastries’ paths past a series of topping-adding machines: icing, sprinkles, cream, etc. Do this in the right order, to fulfill the right… er… orders, and your happy (but sadly invisible) customer will reward you via level progression. You’ll create the kind of winding paths and complex overall ‘systems’ that are highly entertaining to observe in action—for initial novelty, at least.
It’s the extra mechanics that go a long way to making Freshly Frosted a success, with their ability to engage, challenge, and—ultimately—reward the player who arrives at each carefully crafted solution. Early on, the concept of joining conveyor belts together is introduced, to merge streams of donuts. The game then carries this concept across its remaining levels. Beyond that, you’ll find splitters that divert donuts via one of two alternate routes, delivery counters that only accept a specific donut type, and ‘pushers’ that shove your buns from one belt to the next.
As a packaged game, Freshly Frosted unfortunately lacks the sparkly additions that its donuts feature in abundance. You’re pretty much looking at the equivalent of a plain glaze here. True, there are some welcome features like a ‘speed up’ option for impatient donut-wranglers. But the controls are occasionally awkward, even though an undo mitigates the instant ‘clear all’ effect of the Y button. There’s nothing to offset the busyness that large levels can suffer from, and you may struggle if your focus is less than laser-sharp. It would also benefit from an optional top-down view and clearer design details on some of the contraptions.
Most frustrating is the occasional lag which can make laying out conveyer paths a frustrating experience. Bizarrely, this appears to be at least somewhat baked-in—there’s an accessibility option which explicitly introduces input lag, something which was new to me. You can turn this off, although it’s a mystery why it’s enabled by default, but that doesn’t eliminate the occasional, presumably unintentional lag from kicking in.
Freshly Frosted caters to puzzle fans looking for a relaxing yet challenging experience. The difficulty curve is rewarding, even if it starts off a bit too slowly, and the challenges are moreish, with plenty of a hook to keep you coming back for more. It’s just a shame there isn’t a little more depth to the overall structure, and that small flaws detract from what is an otherwise excellent core game.
Freshly Frosted £7.19
Summary
Freshly Frosted looks the part, and packs in plenty of addictive and varied puzzles. It’s a shame that some of the details are less refined, but puzzle fans should find this an enjoyable and satisfying challenge.