Krispy Kreme, Dunkin, Randy’s…many people have their favorite places and varieties of gooey fried donuts. Quantum Astrophysics Guild has brought these comfort treats to gaming in a new puzzle title on Switch in Freshly Frosted available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox Systems, and Steam.
The first word that comes to mind when you start Freshly Frosted is “therapeutic”. There’s not much of a narrative, you are someone simply staring at clouds and picturing donuts being made. It’s a simple yet welcoming starting point to the game. You’ll puzzle solve by building a conveyer belt system from a start point to an endpoint. Its entry-level is easy enough to grasp before the difficulty quickly ramps up as you’ll not only need to send these donuts through production but have to hit specific points on the board that represent frosting, sprinkles, whip cream, and cherries along the way.
Freshly Frosted isn’t bringing something new to the puzzle game genre, however, they have crafted an incredibly polished experience in the details. It’s an ASMR feast that begins at the menu. You can’t help but pause to admire the visual design of the bright color pattern that mixes with such a melodic music number. These details continue into the game through this narrator’s couch calming voice. The trial-and-error would be controller throwing in any other title but there’s something so soothing about the encouragement you get when you’re wrong it holds you up like a soft sleep number bed.
As you build the right track of conveyer belt and watch these donuts go through production and into their destination, you’ll be mesmerized by the visual rhythm a correctly completed puzzle generates. It truly hits a simplistic part of our brains that feeds on rewarding sounds and pictures.
The game features twelve different worlds adding up to 144 puzzles for you to solve. For the price, Freshly Frosted is a decent-sized experience.
Most puzzle games are fine as mobile phone apps that never need to be ported to gaming systems. Few examples like the co-op puzzle game Death Squared exist that are truly worthy of our attention at home. Freshly Frosted’s polish elevates it to this status. Where it stops short of being exceptionally perfect is where it stops. Due to the tiny development team, it’s a very intimate single-player experience but I would personally like to see what this level of the game can be when incorporating co-op or competitive multiplayer modes.
Ultimately, Freshly Frosted is a multisensory engaging time. It’s hard to not love how relaxingly sedated you find yourself becoming while playing this game. For those looking for a new addictive puzzle game, Freshly Frosted earns its price of admission but we’d love to see contemporary elements like multiplayer modes added in a future release.
