Fans of the cozy baking competition show Great British Bake Off (known in the US as The Great British Baking Show) love a good bake, whether we’re looking at a classic Victoria Sandwich cake or a more inventive recipe. Watching the contestants in the welcoming enviroment of the tent is as comforting as your favorite pair of slippers, and many fans wish they could be right there alongside the bakers.
However, some of us prefer to keep our kitchen experience virtual, and thankfully there are plenty of cozy games with cooking elements to satisfy our needs. There are many options to simulate the baking experiences of your dreams, from fast-paced restaurant simulations to more relaxed games with baking elements.
Related: 10 Best Cozy Games That Aren’t About Farming
Lemon Cake
This bakery game from Cozy Bee Studios has the most adorable artwork and is available across multiple systems including PC, Switch, Playstation, and Xbox. In Lemon Cake, you wander into an abandoned bakery that’s haunted by the very friendly ghost of its former owner. She’s eager to have the bakery up and running again and offers to teach you her recipes if you’ll help return the store to its former glory.
This game is all about the bakes, making it a perfect fit for a Great British Bake Off themed gaming session. You gather ingredients from your kitchen and the attached greenhouse, mix them together, and bake them off in brick ovens. As customers come in, you take their orders, deliver their bakes, and keep the bakery clean while doing it. By leveling up, you earn access to new recipes and various upgrades for the shop that make things a bit less chaotic.
Papa’s Cupcakeria
The Papa’s games from Frontline Studios are a whole franchise with various food themes, and we think the Cupcakeria is the perfect fit for a Great British Bake Off celebration. Papa’s Cupcakeria is a mobile game available via the Apple App Store or Google Play.
In this game, you work in a restaurant that sells cupcakes, taking customer orders and building their cupcakes from start to finish. You’ll juggle multiple customer order tickets as you fill each order from start to finish, selecting the right batter, mix-ins, frosting, and toppings, not to mention making sure you bake them for the right amount of time! As you progress through Papa’s Cupcakeria, you’ll unlock new customers and ingredients to keep things interesting.
This game also features mini-games between rounds where you can earn money to upgrade your shop and decorate it to fit the season. Doing so will earn you bonus points that keep your customers more patient while waiting for their cupcakes.
Good Pizza, Great Pizza
This story-driven pizzeria simulator from TapBlaze lets you run and decorate your very own pizza shop. Good Pizza, Great Pizza has a cozy, 2D art style and is available on mobile, PC, and Switch. Unlike some other cooking simulators, Good Pizza, Great Pizza has a plot that progresses as you serve up pies, with different characters telling you the stories of their lives. This makes it a great immersive experience for the gamer who isn’t just here for the cooking grind but wants to experience a story as well.
In TapBlaze, you’ll take customer orders at the restaurant counter, then swap over to the kitchen area to roll out the pizza dough, add the right toppings, and send it through the oven to get baked. You’ll also compete with the rival pizzeria across the street and fulfill customer requests based on the story.
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! is the third installment in the cooking simulation series from Vertigo Gaming, Inc. To play, you drive a food truck across America, serving a variety of recipes to customers all over the nation. While this game isn’t baking-centric, it does feature plenty of delicious-looking desserts that still make it a great cozy choice for Bake Off season. Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! is available on most systems including PC, Mac Switch, Playstation, and Xbox.
You’ll also set your daily menu and customize the look of your food truck. Pick a location to travel to, then open up shop where you’ll take customer orders at the food truck window. Each recipe has a series of prep and cook stages you’ll work through while balancing your other orders for the day. The in-game food has a 3D realistic art style that is incredibly immersive and makes you feel like you’re cooking up some tasty treats. It also features a co-op mode if you want to serve up dishes alongside a friend.
The Sims 4: Cottage Living
No, The Sims 4 isn’t a cooking game, but it does have really robust cooking and kitchen design capabilities. Baking is a skill in and of itself in The Sims 4, so you can learn a series of different dishes to make as your Sim levels up their baking knowledge. For that extra cozy Great British Bake Off vibe, we recommend adding the Cottage Living DLC, which will give you the kind of decor and baking arsenal you need to pretend you’re on a baking competition.
Cooking in The Sims 4 is mainly a lot of point and click, like most features of the game. You can have your Sims read books or just keep baking to level up their skill and watch as they create more and more delicious recipes. This is a good pick if you want the cozy baking vibes without the fast-paced customer satisfaction element of most straightforward cooking simulation games.
No matter what kind of in-game cooking experience you’re looking for, there’s almost definitely a cozy game that will fit the bill and get your gaming on theme with another season of Bake Off.
Published: Sep 29, 2023 11:46 am