Okay, you either love or hate Spongebob Squarepants, the titular yellow sponge with the annoying voice that obscurely lives in a pineapple under the sea. ‘Spongebob Squarepants: The Cosmic Shake,’ by Purple Lamp Studios, is a perfect reimagining of the Spongebob Squarepants cartoons as a game, and it’s somewhat of a sequel to ‘Spongebob Squarepants: The Battle for Bikini Bottom-Rehydrated,’ produced by the same company in 2020.

Spongebob is literally the definition of a troublemaker, and within the first 2 minutes of gameplay, he has caused a mess. Waking up on a new day, Spongebob and his equally famous starfish dummy of a friend, Patrick, are messing with things that aren’t to be messed with.

Acquiring a cosmic vial of Mermaid Tears from a travelling merchant that grants wishes, the two rocket scientists (pure sarcasm) unleash portals to other Wishworlds, where they must gather their friends and their old lives back. While the story is entertaining enough for children, I didn’t find it that creative, but it was held together very well by the superb voice acting in the characters, all voiced by their original talented actors.

Your main objective in this Spongebob title will be to collect Cosmic Jelly and defeat jelly monsters of varying abilities, all while you travel to the end of the world to rescue one of your Bikini Bottom pals accumulating in a boss battle with the ones you love.

Being an adventure platformer, many controls are introduced throughout the levels. This is great as it keeps what becomes a pretty repetitive journey slightly refreshed from time to time. I say this as the jelly enemies encountered as you travel along the Wishworlds aren’t particularly challenging, nor are they memorable.

The boss battles, though also not challenging, add that muchly-needed excitement due to the difference in strategies you could take to tackle them. What lacks in the enemy design, I will say, is made up for in the levels themselves. They really switch up each level so you are not only climbing platforms, but you could be racing a seahorse, side-scrolling a Kung Fu action scene, or even stealth-like crawling sequences past spooky jellies.

Spongebob has a plethora of skills; from the usual double jump, glide, dodge, and attack spins, to the more unusual, such as surfboard riding, karate kicking, and even the jump and boo scare a creature to death which he learns along the way as he needs them. These controls are easy to master and mapped out really well, making them easy for even small humans to learn.

There aren’t really any upgrades, but before each new world, our traveller Mermaid friend grants us a new costume imbued with new skills suited to each adventure. These costumes are very cute and definitely worth the wait to see as you giggle at the iconic Spongebob looks.

Although there were some bugs in the game that the developers ironed out fairly quickly, and I highly respect them for that, there were instances that my character would get caught in an environmental feature and I couldn’t get out. This was resolved with a simple reload of a save, and thankfully the game has many checkpoints, but you can even manually save too.

The graphics are definitely eye-catching, whether it be the actual gameplay or the cutscene cinematics. The animations are of such high quality they could be their own episode on TV. Contrary to the cartoons that actually are on TV, these animations and in-game graphics are of a 3D rendered style. The scenes are bright and child-like in boldness, with each environment you explore continuing these themes of pure happiness and fun.

The audio complements it perfectly too, with its upbeat iconic theme song in the menu, all the way through to themed tunes throughout. Cowboy banjo twangs accompany the Western level to even the mildly haunting spooky skeleton vibes in the Halloween level.

Overall, Spongebob Squarepants: The Cosmic Shake, while not an enthralling adventure of substance for an adult, is something that I can just imagine the joy and wonder it would present to a child who is a fan of our cute little yellow spongy friend and his idiot pink starfish sidekick. The effort put into the graphics and voice acting alone will make anyone understand how much love went into this fabulous little adventure platformer.

Written by: Stacey