Becoming one of the more popular party game genres, managing your time and working together with a friend to keep your customers happy can get out of hand really quickly. Bringing us a new version of this experience is Huu Games as they released Shakes on a Plane. With the help of Assemble Entertainment, they manage to release it on multiple platforms, but is it worth playing? For the most part, I would say it is, but let’s break it down because it isn’t without fault.

Gameplay

This game allows up to four players to play together, but if you are running solo then be prepared to switch between two different characters. At first, I thought that would be frustrating, but having a second character to work with was actually quite helpful, especially in the more stressful levels.

There are two main reasons that the game has at least two characters in each round. First, splitting tasks based on location makes it faster to complete tasks in a timely manner and can ease the overall effort needed to keep the customers happy. Second, it is possible for your character to become incapacitated and it takes roughly five-to-ten seconds before they revive, which can be a game-changing amount of time. So, instead of having to just sit out until your character gets back into action, you can just have the other one take over.

Splitting up the tasks between two-to-four players makes the game somewhat simple until much later in the game, unfortunately. That said, you will need to work on your plan of action as you reach these later levels because when it jumps in difficulty you need to be ready. The same can be said for those playing solo, but that jump in difficulty happens a bit sooner; roughly level 12, in my opinion.

The tasks you will be managing are actually more diverse than originally thought. While you are going to be managing restaurant-style choices while on these flight levels, there are some interesting curve balls thrown at you. It starts off with just simple coffee and water, then they introduce food and ovens, then they bring in the fruit and shakes, then you have the fact that people order more than one thing and so you have to use a tray to bring everything over, then you have the barf bags and clean up tasks, and then it moves on to my personal favorite task; sky dropping customers. What’s sky dropping customers, you ask? Well, that means you have to put that customer over a hatch, find their correlating luggage, put the luggage on the hatch, and then pull the lever to drop them.

There are more tasks that you will need to focus on as well, such as turbulence and customer waste. Be ready for a smorgasbord of task types as the ones I mention above are only the main ones.

My main tip for this game, especially when playing solo, is to have everything set up to go after you grab it. Grab the water, push the machine to produce another one, then serve the water. This lets you have everything you could need ready on stand-by for when a customer orders one and you won’t have to wait for it. There are some tasks that require you to perform them as they are ordered, such as the shakes, but if you can early prep serving items then do that.

Visual and Sounds

Honestly, I would have to say that this field is pretty basic overall. They do provide a nice cartoon-style aesthetic, which works well for these games, but the quality was rather simplistic. The music choice throughout the game is far from memorable and truly felt like a filler option so that it wasn’t just quiet.

Replayability

Since each level has a completion rating system, there is always room for improvement in each level. I can see some players going back through levels in hopes of getting full marks on each level. Then there are players who just enjoy the challenge that these games provide, so once you unlock the later levels and find the ones that are difficult, you can always keep pushing to master the task management needed for the high demanding levels.

What Could Be Better

Pretty much everything when it comes to the visuals and sounds. They simply weren’t impressive nor memorable. I would have liked a more catchy tune and slightly better graphic quality.

While I did end up liking that I had a second character to swap with, they shouldn’t make that a mandatory option. Unless a level is literally split into two areas and one character can run between them, then there should be the option to truly run the level solo.

Conclusion

Shakes on a Plane is definitely a fun time management title. While I find it more entertaining to play with friends, it is still a good game to play solo as well. It would have been nice if they were able to put more effort into the graphical and audio quality, but for a game made by such a small team, it is a great fit for the quirky time management game genre.