Do you love Sony’s Fat Princess, the downloadable title on PlayStation 3? If so, you are not the target of Sony’s latest mobile release, Fat Princess: Piece of Cake (Free). Rather, this game, like many of Sony’s mobile efforts thus far, seems to be more of a promotional tool to pull in people unfamiliar with the franchise. Not only does the gameplay have very little in common with the unique gameplay of the main title, but one of the interesting hooks of this app is the ability to win a code for a free copy of the original Fat Princess for PS3. It’s sort of fascinating watching Sony figuring out how they want to incorporate mobile into their overall gaming strategy. I can’t say it’s yielding the fruits some would hope for, but I at least applaud them for giving it a try, and at the very least, you can’t say that they aren’t paying attention to what sells in the mobile market.

Taking out companion apps, Sony have made three mobile games based on their franchises so far. They kicked things off with a puzzle game based on PS4 launch dud Knack, where you could earn items that you could use in the console game. Next, there was a behind-the-back runner based on Ratchet & Clank, which allowed you to transfer the currency earned in it to the PS3 game Into The Nexus. Fat Princess: Piece of Cake sees Sony again venture into the shark-infested waters of puzzle games, and this time, the cheese is a bit different. As mentioned in the opening paragraph, you can rather easily earn a code that nets you Fat Princess for your PS3, but beyond that, Piece of Cake has no connection with any other game. With the code being given to you rather early on, there’s nothing external to the game to keep you playing in the long run. One would hope that this would result in a game that stands a bit better on its own as a piece of entertainment than Sony’s prior efforts.

So as not to keep you in suspense, it kind of does work a bit better, but it’s still not a terribly compelling game. The game consists of 50 or so stages. In each one, your goal is to help the portly princess reach the end of the level by taking out any enemies or other obstacles that get in the way. You have four heroes at your disposal. There’s a knight who attacks a single enemy for high damage, a ranger who uses a gun to blast all the enemies in the front row, a demolitions guy who throws bombs that damage and stun enemies in the first two rows, and a wizard who uses his staff to heal the group. Each of these character has a corresponding type of piece on the puzzle board, and matching at least three of one kind will have that character use their ability. Each character has their own HP, and if it’s depleted, they’re removed from the board until you can match enough of their tiles to bring them back.

In addition to the tiles corresponding to the heroes, there are also cake and jewel tiles. Cake tiles charge up the princess’s power, and when it reaches a certain amount, she’ll throw her weight into the battle for some extra damage. Jewel tiles simply add to your wealth, which can be spent between levels to power up each of your heroes. Chains and longer matches of course yield better results, but for the most part, you just need to match your way through each group until you reach the end of the stage. The game sometimes throws alternate goals at you, but they almost always consist of trying to bring a particular piece down to the bottom of the board. You’ll also occasionally fight bosses that will usually mess up your board somehow, requiring you to make matches in particular positions. Think of Dungeon Raid ($0.99) mixed with Candy Crush Saga (Free) and you won’t end up too far off of the gameplay here.

In keeping with King’s hit, there are a number of power-up items you can buy for an unreasonable price if you want them. The game gives you a taste of most of them for free, but that’s all you’ll get. Another page from that handbook includes putting in gates at certain points on the world map that you can cross if you’ve earned enough stars in prior stages or if you pay up. On top of all of that, there’s a stamina meter in the game, and entering stages consumes some of it whether you win or not. It has all kinds of monetization hooks in it, and the deeper you play into the game, the more they’re going to bristle you. This, I suppose, is the other side of Fat Princess: Piece of Cake not being a promotional tool in quite the same way as previous efforts were.  It’s very obviously meant to make some money.

The game is fun enough, especially if you only mean to hang around for the 15 stages it takes to earn the free code. The kid gloves stay on for most of that part of the game, making it pretty clear that Sony would like you to get your free game. If you choose to stick it out for the long haul, be prepared for the maddening difficulty and grind that often accompany free-to-play games of this type. I’m not so thrilled about the theme itself, since I think Fat Princess is kind of problematic in that regard for a couple of reasons, but that aside, the game looks pretty good for a puzzle game, with lots of cute animations and detailed backgrounds.

In terms of value, I can’t really argue with Fat Princess: Piece of Cake. It’s free and you can get a PSN game out of it within an hour of play. Be advised you do need to connect the game to a Facebook account to redeem that code, however. Taken as a stand-alone effort, it’s probably the best thing Sony’s released on iOS so far, though that should be taken as the faint praise it sounds like. It’s competent, the presentation is attractive enough, and it’s not without its enjoyable moments. That said, unless you’re interested in that freebie or really, really love the Fat Princess universe for reasons I won’t even begin to judge you on, there are definitely better games to be playing, even within the free-to-play category.