SpongeBob, I think you are ready for this jelly.
When Purple Lamp Studios slapped a new coat of paint on Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated, I was reasonably convinced that its release was meant to gauge interest in potentially developing a whole new entry in the franchise. Lo and behold, we now have The Cosmic Shake, a spiritual successor in sorts that continues the adventures of our favorite resident who lives in a pineapple under the sea.
In almost every aspect, The Cosmic Shake is a far better effort here than that of Rehydrated, illustrating that Purple Lamp Studios took the feedback of their remastering effort and made a whole new adventure for its titular character that feels like a brand new entry in a long-running series. It has all the trappings of what feels like an older adventure, but with the polish, controls, and gameplay of a modern release. It doesn’t reinvent the platformer and can feel a tad basic to an older crowd, but towards its core demographic it feels like Rehydrated walked so The Cosmic Shake could run.
The Cosmic Shake begins where most SpongeBob adventures start, and that is with both SpongeBob and Patrick causing absolute chaos all around them, despite their innocent and naive intentions. As the pair are granted mystical wishing soap from a traveling fortune teller in the mysterious Kassandra, their wishes to better the lives of their friends end up tearing into the fabric of reality, causing both friends and notable Bikini Bottom establishments, such as the Krusty Krab, to disappear. This then forces the well-intentioned duo to set forth on an adventure to rescue their friends, the Krusty Krab, and quite possibly, the universe itself.
This reality-bending premise takes SpongeBob and Patrick to seven unique worlds, all filled to the brim with nods and easter eggs that pull from some of the series' best episodes. And with the original voice cast all on board from Tom Kenny and Carolyn Lawrence, to Clancy Brown and Bill Fagerbakke, it feels like an authentic trip down memory lane as the entire cast delivers the goods and then some. And, it wouldn't be a SpongeBob game without Bikini Bottom making an appearance as well, acting as your overall hub world and an area that has its own quests, secrets, and more.
The worlds SpongeBob and Patrick will visit vary from wild west towns, halloween hide-aways, pirate ship-filled lagoons, to a prehistoric forest that strips the pair of their modern dialogue in favor of comedic caveman grunts and simple gibberish. These locations are fairly sizable and remarkably open, providing a decent draw distance to really take in their size. You’ll occasionally have the more tunnel-like level design, but more often than not you are presented with spacious environments that are bursting at the seams with color, detail, and absolutely nail the look of the show.
Each level has its own series of side quests, objectives, and additional secret areas that require you to return to them once you've unlocked the ability to progress further. This allows the game to have a bit more life even after the credits have rolled, giving you a reason to jump back in previously completed levels to track down anything you’ve missed, such as coins needed to unlock costumes for SpongeBob to wear, even if they don’t always appear in a few of the game’s better-looking cutscenes. That said, the main currency of the game is jelly, and you’ll be collecting thousands of little jelly dots here and there, even if they don't really serve much of a purpose outside of unlocking outfits alongside the aforementioned coins.
As you explore these strange warped locations, featuring the extended cast in various “multiverse” roles, SpongeBob will have a few methods of moving around that gives you a decent variety in your platforming mobility. SpongeBob can fly across gaps toward enemies with his Kah-Rah-Tay skills, swing across fishing lines, to glide down to safety with a pizza box. While most levels will offer up a new tool to help in exploring, that’s not always the case as some of the later levels do tend to fall back on many of those already acquired abilities, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it gives you plenty of time to grasp how they work and perfect how they can move you around.
Throughout your adventure, you’ll have a few gameplay scenarios that give you a break from the standard platforming. You’ll run atop boulders over rivers of lava, glide atop invisible surfboards, race on the back of a charging seahorse, to plenty of slides that are always fun, but these segments tend to be the fallback idea that Purple Lamp Studios tend to rely on a bit too much, in my opinion. They are fun, but when every level tends to have a slide or two, they tend to become a bit stale.
Combat is another area of the game that can feel a tad repetitive despite how good it feels to just smack everything around you. While there is a wealth of variety in the types of enemies you’ll encounter and how to dispatch them, SpongeBob has a fairly limited toolset of options. To start things off, you have a standard swirl attack that is your main go-to when it comes to combat. Your Kah-Rah-Tay skills let you zoom kick to enemies from a decent distance away, and you can toss out a bubble to trap enemies and leave them open to attack. SpongeBob can also air-stomp, but other than a late-game device used for a boss encounter and then available to you afterward, that is pretty much everything you have available to you. Granted, while combat is fun, I would have loved to have seen maybe using Patrick, who has been turned into a balloon version of himself, used as some sort of weapon as well, maybe a basketball toss or something that involved him a bit more than just being a voice in your ear.
Platforming itself feels great as I found it far easier to figure out if I was going to make the death-defying jumps presented to me than how it felt in Rehydrated. You have several floating and collapsable platforms, trampolines, swinging and gliding sections, and a lot that feels really decent to take in, albeit designed with a younger player in mind. I do have to say that having to hold the gliding button and then letting it go to use the Kah-Rah-Tay kick can cause SpongeBob to fall a tiny bit and you often can miss the prompt to propel yourself forward, but it’s a pretty rare occurrence as this issue only really becomes an annoyance on a few platforming challenges to earn those precious coins.
Overall, everything here feels far more enjoyable than Rehydrated in almost every way. Jumping, combat, and mobility have their issues sure but feel far more competent and enjoyable due to how great it feels to simply move around. Jumps have the appropriate speed and height, and the double jump and dodge work as intended without doing anything special. If SpongeBob is hurting for any health, Patrick will bring him some health “underwear”, but I do wish he brought it to SpongeBob himself instead of bringing it to some point way off in the environment that you’ll often be following him around just to snag it.
Now, my entire experience with the game was on the Steam Deck and it ran incredibly smoothly. I was impressed to no end by just how great this game looks and how fluid it ran on Valve’s miracle hardware. Having this game portable was a real selling point for me and honestly, I would really like to see how this game competes on the now-dated tech crammed into the Switch. Purple Lamp Studios did a fantastic job with the PC port and I’d imagine the current-gen versions on consoles to be nearly as impressive.
I had a really good time with The Cosmic Shake and feel that Purple Lamp Studios has a solid handle on where to take SpongeBob next. Rehydrated was a pretty decent experience, but The Cosmic Shake just feels fresher and a great deal more fun to play due to it feeling great to move SpongeBob around and take in the strange lands throughout the story. I think with a more robust combat system and more variety in what each level offers us to play around in, then I think we will get that much closer to enjoying the perfect SpongeBob game. The Cosmic Shake is a wonderful step in providing new experiences for the little sponge man and frankly, I can’t wait for more.
Developer -Purple Lamp Studios. Publisher - THQ Nordic. Released - January 31st, 2023. Available On - Xbox One/Series X/S, PlayStation 4/5, Switch, Windows. Rated - (E-10) Fantasy Violence, Comic Mischief. Platform Reviewed - Windows / Steam Deck. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.