What do you have to do? You are in charge of a team of bakers in the Genesis Crafty bakery. Each little baker works at a particular station. As the bread orders come in, it’s your job to activate each baker in his task, get him to pass the dough along to the next stage of the process, and eventually into the oven and out for delivery. Each stage is activated by clicking the mouse over the appropriate chef. This sounds deceptively easy, and the tutorial that guides you through the first round of baking lulls you into a false sense of security. As the levels progress, different types of bread require different production tasks. Some dough goes sour if it is left out too long, bread burns in the oven if you leave it in too long, and if you’re not careful before long there is sour dough all over the floor and flames bursting out of the oven. Oh, and there’s a time limit to each level. We got to level two.

 

How does the brand fit? Genesis Crafty is strong on its friendly, quirky image, not a million miles away from Innocent drinks, and this is perfectly complemented by the fun, childlike images in the game. Knead for speed attempts to immerse the player in a cartoon world of bread baking mischief, without the actual danger of causing a kitchen inferno. Assuming you’re any good, you can share your baking prowess on your Facebook page, and encourage your friends to beat your score. When you pause the game, a carousel of Genesis Crafty products appears, which is a nice touch.

Is it any good? It’s hard, only you don’t realise exactly how hard until you’ve made a complete mess of it. It’s entirely mouse controlled, so we bet it’s a nightmare to play on a laptop fingerpad.

Our kitchen was a disaster area

Verdict: Brand Fit 9/10. Game play 6/10. Fun, and very work friendly. It loses a couple of points for being a Facebook game (why couldn’t they host it on the site and stick the Facebook sharing functionality on?). Also there were far too many bread related puns for our liking.  

(UPDATE 14.9: We've since found out that you can play Knead for Speed on the Genesis Crafty website, so we take back everything we said about Facebook. So there's no excuse not to have a go yourself)

To learn more about branded games or how game mechanics can be help give your marketing campaigns the edge, you should probably check out the gaming event for brands:  Extra Life.