Spongebob Squarepants: The Cosmic Shake Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 2/28/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake

Developer: Purple Lamp

Publisher: THQ

Genre(s): 3D Platformer

Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS5, Xbox Series X

Release Date: January 31, 2023

With their initial task of reworking, or should I say, “rehydrating,” the cult classic licensed game Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom to fit the modern standards of gaming concluded, Purple Lamp Studios were still under contract as the core developer for all of Spongebob’s future interactive adventures. Whether or not one found Rehydrated to be the splendid makeover job that made Battle for Bikini Bottom bloom anew or thought it paled in comparison to the original despite its glossy new graphics was superfluous. The fact of the matter was that Purple Lamp was given the keys to the Spongebob gaming mansion once owned by Heavy Iron, and the gaming community had to trust that they wouldn’t burn it to the ground. Really, the problem with Rehydrated was that Purple Lamp felt obligated to fix what wasn’t broken for the sake of putting in a hard day’s work. When the developers tinker with air-tight aspects of something that already exists just for the sake of change alone, the contentment of those used to the smooth familiarities is bound to be upset. I can’t comment that this is the encompassing reason why Rehydrated garnered mixed reception from critics and fans alike, but that’s my own personal gripe with Purple Lamp’s remake of my most cherished video game from childhood. Purple Lamp simply needed to pave their own path with the Spongebob IP instead of attempting to spruce up one with its own cemented legacy. I was confident with Purple Lamp’s competency displayed with Rehydrated that they’d thrive in the creation process of a completely new product. Spongebob Squarepants: The Cosmic Shake is Rehydrated’s spiritual successor entirely of Purple Lamp’s own creation, and it’s probably the most delightful Spongebob video game adaptation since the original Battle for Bikini Bottom.

Truthfully, the nagging issue I initially had upon playing The Cosmic Shake had nothing to do with Purple Lamp’s involvement as its developer. One vital component of Battle for Bikini Bottom’s greatness, besides its impeccable gameplay, is that it was released in the glory days of Spongebob’s golden period when Stephen Hillenburg was still at the creative helm of the cartoon sensation. The timeless humor that propelled Spongebob to the stratosphere of the animated television Gods shone as brightly in Battle for Bikini Bottom as it did with the episodes that ran concurrently. Given that the quality of Spongebob took a noticeable nosedive immediately after Hillenburg resigned from his post, imagine how immensely The Cosmic Shake will suffer by being a Spongebob product decades after the source material declined. To my delight, The Cosmic Shake isn’t afflicted with the deepening Flanderization the show keeps digging itself into as it continues to air. Firstly, the plot premise of The Cosmic Shake takes a similar approach to Battle for Bikini Bottom, letting the main antagonist of the story take advantage of Spongebob’s childlike naivety. Only this time, he’s not blameless for the chaos that ensues. Spongebob is given a special bottle of bubble soap from a mysterious vendor operating out of Glove World. When Spongebob brings it around town (literally) and blows several spectacular bubbles without any concern, he learns the hard way how special this particular bottle of glossy liquid is when it shreds the space-time continuum. With Bikini Bottom in a state of disarray like it was pounded by Hurricane Katrina, Spongebob must rely on the cosmic insight of the mermaid who gave him the magic, volatile bubble soap to restore his hometown that has been profoundly affected by the calamity. The plot premise is refreshing because modern Spongebob has a penchant for inconveniencing his fellow Bikini Bottomites without being aware of his toxic influence, much less taking responsibility for it. As Spongebob ventures out on his mission to amend his mistakes, it’s also relieving that he barely exhibits all of the irritating, watered-down characteristics of his personality that have cropped up due to the show overstaying far past its prime. He’s that kind hearted, gregarious invertebrate that I and everyone else around my age fell head over heels with instead of the infuriating cretin he’s become who alternates between intensely singing and crying like a theater kid in desperate need of a prescription to Ritalin. All of the notable secondary characters are also suppressing their dumbed-down traits the show has unfortunately seeped into their personas as well. The Cosmic Shake may not provide any moments that generate a hearty laugh from me, but it satisfies the metric of a quality modern Spongebob product in that it isn’t insufferable.

Except for Revenge of the Flying Dutchman, every Spongebob video game I’ve played involves one or more of Spongebob’s friends performing a significant portion of the legwork as playable characters. The Cosmic Shake waives this recurring trend and puts Spongebob on his lonesome. Patrick still has a prominent presence as a character, but he’s been relegated to a diminutive sidekick. Like Daxter, all he does is hover over Spongebob’s shoulder for the entire duration of the game, providing commentary and banter for entertainment value. Because Spongebob has been tasked to undergo this intrepid quest without any aid on the field, he’s gained quite the platformer move pool to work off of. From Sandy, Spongebob has inherited her swinging and gliding abilities, with the former executed with Spongebob latching his enormous tongue to hanging fish hooks (ouch!) and the latter move involves using a pizza box about the classic first-season episode “Pizza Delivery.” I hate to be one of those guys, but it’s the pizza inside the box with parachute properties, not the box itself. Boy, I hope someone got fired for that blunder. Similar to the hooks, Spongebob can karate kick a series of balloons reminiscent of Sonic’s homing attack. Spongebob’s base method of offense is his tried and true bubble wand from BfBB, with the karate kick and a ground pound covering the space of the air and the ground in between. Both the bubble-oriented maneuvers were conjured up by Purple lamp, with a surfboard that glides to distances unreachable with the inexplicably magical pizza box and blowing a bubble that ensnares enemies in a state of vulnerability. Covering plenty of bases with this eclectic set of moves should put the player in a state of confidence. Every new move is easy to learn and just as practical to master, with plenty of utilization on the field afterward once they are unlocked. If one still can’t use all of these skills to blaze towards victory, the player can take advantage of Spongebob’s cartwheel move for defensive purposes. Dodge rolling? In a Spongebob game? We truly live in strange times.

Bikini Bottom’s properties lost in the bubble cataclysm also extend to Spongebob’s friends, also known as the notable supporting cast from the show. The vicious vortexes opened by the arcane bubble soap have sucked each of Spongebob’s friends into alternate dimensions of Bikini Bottom’s notable districts, and Spongebob must traverse through these bizarro realms of familiar territory to blow his compadres back home like Dorothy from Oz. The omniverse trope has been exceedingly popular across all forms of fiction over the past decade, and I’ve always cynically surmised that the infinite possibilities that come with this concept provide a cop out for writers to never have to consider the logic or rationality behind any of their ideas. I’ll accept Spongebob using this exhausted device since it’s used for lighthearted variety instead of abstract convolution.

The rustic wilderness of Jellyfish Fields fits nicely as the frontier for a wild west setting, with Spongebob riding around on seahorses between barrels of hay and oncoming trains. The urban ritziness of Downtown Bikini Bottom is apparently comparable to Hollywood, considering a portion of the city is being sectioned off to film a karate kung fu film starring Spongebob and Sandy. The beachy Goo Lagoon fits perfectly for a pirate-themed romp, but the Halloweeny theme driving Rock Bottom’s revisit presents a misunderstanding of why the submerged city was effectively spooky in BfBB. The setting is supposed to be the cold and unnerving kind of spooky, not an underwater version of Jack Skellington’s residence. After skipping a few vital BfBB settings in their consecutive streak before returning to the Kelp Forest as it is was before the dawn of civilization, Cosmic Shake starts paving over ground uncharted in BfBB by teleporting Spongebob to a medieval settlement in the Sulfur Fields and returning to the amusement park of Glove World as a fully traversable environment. One can tell that each level’s theme functions as a distinct, kooky adventure premise, and that each area’s coat of refurbishment branches off of the original setting’s atmosphere sensibly. This logical correlation also extends to which of Spongebob’s associates is providing the progression path, with Mr. Krabs as a high-profile bank robber in Jellyfish Fields and his bratty whale daughter Pearl as a literal princess in part of the medieval caste in the Sulfur Fields. I’m sick to death of various pieces of modern media using the multidimensional trope so liberally as if its perceived unlimited potential will never exhaust and become a cliche, with The Cosmic Shake as yet another example in a long lineup of them. Still, I can’t deny that it fosters a varied gamut of level premises that ensure the player is never bored by repetition.

However, one significant aspect of each of The Cosmic Shake’s areas that does, unfortunately, instill a moderate feeling of boredom in me is their design. Progressing through every single district of Bikini Bottom and its neighboring city below it is as linear as following the yellow brick road. Admittedly, many of BfBB’s levels are formatted with a straightforward climb or trek, but some of the later levels, like the Mermalair and the Kelp Forest, weren’t afraid to throw a monkey wrench into the course of linearity with some more methodical sections. No matter their placement in the game, each level of The Cosmic Shake barely shakes up (no pun intended) the format in the slightest. Most of the time, the disruptions on the field are enemy gauntlet barricades where Spongebob is forced to eliminate all of the jelly creatures, either created by the tampering of the sacred bubble soap product or they’ve traveled to Bikini Bottom from some horrid cosmic realm via a resonance cascade-like portal. Like the robots from BfBB, these grotesque purple monsters emerge with various physical and offensive properties. Some of them even transmit the tactics of Plankton’s mechanical creations with a jelly that shoots tartar sauce from a squirt gun and a duplicator who shares a strong resemblance to Mr. Krabs’ abominable “appetizer” from “Squilliam Returns.” With their assorted abilities all targeting Spongebob at once, the army of these extraterrestrial curiosities will efficiently keep the player alert when their battles arise. Still, waiting for the opportunity to hit some bulkier enemies like the strapping brute who wields a bathtub and the tall sandworms tends to make some fighting scenarios a little grating. When the game actually provides progression impediments that are implemented with the level design, like searching for cactus juice or locating pirate ships to reel a sock to the top of their mast like a flag, the game soils the scavenger hunt by highlighting their locations with targets seen from any angle. What’s the fun in that? Even if games are developed with a younger demographic in mind, providing a reference pronounced so obviously whenever something needs to be located severely undermines the player’s intelligence.

Some of The Cosmic Shake’s bosses are also unfortunately beset by oddly facile gameplay scenarios. Retrieving Mr. Krabs from his joyous stint of funneling in stolen money as an outlaw involves a chase sequence on seahorseback, but one cannot tell that bringing Mr. Krabs to justice is part of this goal because Spongebob’s manager is barely present during this sequence. Seeing Prawn again after I figured he would be endemic to BfBB was a delightful surprise, and his pelting of Spongebob with explosive pies throughout Goo Lagoon’s beaches is both a wonderful reference and a thrilling threat to constantly keep a vigilant eye out for. Still, the process of seizing his ship so the Flying Dutchman can reclaim control over all pirate activity in Goo Lagoon is achieved so suddenly that I’m still confused as to exactly what I did to shoot the pretentious shrimp out of the sky. Having an old hag with witch powers use her spells to spill a birthday cake out of Spongebob’s hands isn’t a unique challenge: it’s an annoyance. However, the other half of The Cosmic Shake’s climactic battles among the duds actually involve intimate combat and intricate battle mechanics with a Spongebob series regular. The swift, crafty Sandy and the blubbering cave whale version of Pearl will make the player utilize the dodge rolling maneuver in both of their fights, quickly darting around the ricocheting of a heaving hamster wheel with spikes and tidal waves of tears, respectively. “Fighting” a gigantically mutated Gary, possessed like Regan from The Exorcist if the pea soup projectiles are any indication, is another unorthodox duel where the target of Spongebob’s offense is rather the three candy machines whose bountiful supply of sugar has apparently transformed Gary into this monstrosity. Unlike the cake deliveries in the castle, dodging Gary’s gaze as Spongebob climbs the sprawling staircase of Rock Bottom’s museum is quite tense. Shooting Glove World’s disturbing mascot with the contents sucked up in a reef blower is also one of the more rousing brawls. None of these fights against slightly adulterated forms of Spongebob’s friends are comparable to gaming’s brow-sweating brawls like The Nameless King or anything, but I commend the last few mentioned because there is at least a discernible amount of effort in their encounters as opposed to the ones I critiqued. The game’s final boss, where Kassandra uses a particularly irate Squidward as a vessel to crush Spongebob, technically fits the more exemplary half of boss fights, but the general encompassing ease of them all, regardless of the mechanics, makes this concluding duel rather anticlimactic. It’s probably an apologetic gesture for how Purple Lamp misappropriated Robot Squidward in Rehydrated, but now the studio has to redeem itself again for an unmemorable final boss fight.

If the player wants gameplay from The Cosmic Shake that requires a more concerted approach, they can still receive that by seeking out the optional collectibles. Scattered around every bizarro realm of Bikini Bottom are several gold doubloons, a currency used to purchase the treasure trove of fan service the game provides: the costumes. Sure, Madame Kassandra gives Spongebob a fitting new costume for the environment he’s about to visit per her attuned feminine judgment for fashion. Still, collecting the coins unlocks a whole wardrobe of recognizable outfits from the cartoon series that are sure to titillate any Spongebob fan. My bias veers me towards the ones from the first three seasons, but I did spend plenty of my playthrough walking about in hippie Spongebob’s sandals and Rockstar Spongebob’s ridiculous platform boots with the same amount of amusement. Interactively wearing a reference is certainly a perk, but collecting the coins themselves is its own reward. They are located in places that are genuinely difficult to spot on the immediate path, and the fact that no radar easily susses out their locations to the player like every main objective fosters an organic, meticulous searching process. A sizable number of coins are also unobtainable until Spongebob acquires a specific move, so collecting them also increases the game’s replay value tenfold. With the promise of diversifying Spongebob’s outfit and a substantial challenge, I highly recommend that every player go the distance and invest in a Scrooge McDuck-sized coin purse.

I still decree that Spongebob Squarepants: The Cosmic Shake is undoubtedly the dorky, excitable sea sponge’s second finest outing in an interactive medium. It doesn’t sound like exalting praise, but considering how many times Nickelodeon’s hottest property has been misused in gaming, I can assure you that I’m giving kudos to Purple Lamp. In saying this, The Cosmic Shake’s placement as a silver-award winner among Spongebob’s interactive titles still ranks far below the golden God that is Battle for Bikini Bottom, and I’m referring to the original, of course. Purple Lamp’s questionable mechanics that were present in their Rehydrated remake are still driving our yellow protagonist. While they don’t bother me as much as they previously did when they were adulterating my beloved BfBB, their streamlined feel still makes moving around as Spongebob feel less impactful. Really, it’s more appropriate for The Cosmic Shake because the entire game exudes a sense of ironing out BfBB to a point of steaming out much of its tender juices. The level design is far too linear for my liking, and this narrow progression naturally invites the game to sanction many uninspired aspects of gameplay that verge too heavily into effortless territory. Is this the standard for modern games with a school-aged demographic in mind? Still, The Cosmic Shake radiates the same old school Spongebob charm that its gilded predecessor did, and that’s all a Spongebob fan can possibly ask for after years of annoying all of the kids who grew up with his earlier episodes. A worthwhile licensed game is still elevated by evoking the aura of its source material, and The Cosmic Shake is adequate enough on that merit alone.