SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake (Review)

Developer: Purple Lamp
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Available On: PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One
PS4 version reviewed on PS5

The story behind SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake is one of my favorite industry stories of the past few years. The developers at Purple Lamp were responsible for the 2020 remake of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, a 3D action platformer from 2003. While their remake received mixed reviews from critics, the general audience loved it and it became a commercial success that sold over 2 million copies. Purple Lamp was then given the opportunity to make their own SpongeBob game to act as a spiritual successor to Battle for Bikini Bottom, taking everything they learned from working on the remake to craft a brand new adventure. As it turns out, the team at Purple Lamp is more than capable of creating their own game, resulting in an experience that’s brimming with nostalgia and feels like it was directly pulled from the early 2000s era of licensed platformers.

SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated (Review)

Developer: Purple Lamp Studios
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Available On: Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One
PS4 Version Reviewed on PS5

The fact that I spent the past few weeks bouncing between Resident Evil: Village and SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated is probably one of the weirdest series of events in my gaming career. It’s not that I needed a palette cleanser from the horror of Resident Evil, or that I was looking for an easy Platinum Trophy (which this game definitely has), I just wanted to relive a piece of my childhood. I rented the original version of Battle for Bikini Bottom on the OG Xbox for a weekend as a kid, but I wasn’t able to beat it. Now that it somehow got a fancy new remaster on modern consoles, I figured I’d throw it in my GameFly queue and check it out again.