SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake

Lore & Background

The game follows SpongeBob and Patrick as they journey across seven alternate realities called Wish Worlds to save their friends and Bikini Bottom after SpongeBob uses magic bubble soap that causes chaos. Patrick is transformed into a balloon, and SpongeBob collects Cosmic Jelly for the mermaid fortune teller Madame Kassandra, who has her own villainous intentions. The plot involves rescuing friends from worlds such as Wild West Jellyfish Fields, Karate Downtown Bikini Bottom, and Halloween Rock Bottom, culminating in a battle against Kassandra and a jelly monster version of Squidward.

Development focused on making the game more story-driven and fast-paced than its predecessor, with a larger emphasis on quests and unlockable costumes. Unlike Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated, only SpongeBob is playable, and he gains new abilities including a Karate Kick and gliding. The game features voice-acting from the show's original cast and was developed in close collaboration with writers from the series. Each world was designed as a twist on locations from the series, with specific gameplay themes like complex platforming or fighting.

Reader's Guide

SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake received mixed reviews from critics, who praised its faithfulness to the source material but criticized its lack of innovation. According to GameSensor, over 60,000 players added the game to their Steam wish lists before release, and it sold nearly 50,000 units on Steam in its first month, reaching tenth place on the UK sales chart. In May 2023, Embracer Group stated that initial sales were below expectations but anticipated a long tail of revenue. The game was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on January 31, 2023, with later ports to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, iOS, and Android. A sequel, SpongeBob SquarePants: Titans of the Tide, was released in November 2025.

Did You Know?

• The game was green-lit after the commercial success of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated.
• Only SpongeBob is playable, unlike the predecessor which had three playable characters.
• Patrick is transformed into a balloon throughout the game.

From Tide Pools to Television

Hillenburg grew up fascinated by the ocean and developed his artistic skills at a young age, though he initially found the idea of drawing fish uninteresting. He pursued both passions simultaneously in college—majoring in marine biology and minoring in art—before joining the Ocean Institute in Dana Point, California, in 1984. There, his two worlds finally converged. He produced a comic book called The Intertidal Zone, designed to help visiting students understand the animal life of tide pools. The comic featured anthropomorphic sea creatures, many of which would later evolve into recognizable SpongeBob characters. Hillenburg attempted to get the comic professionally published but was turned down by every company he approached. A significant creative spark came from Ween's 1997 album The Mollusk, whose nautical and underwater themes resonated deeply with him. He reached out to the band, shared his nascent ideas for what would become SpongeBob, and requested a song. They delivered "Loop de Loop" on Christmas Eve, which ultimately made its way into the episode "Your Shoe's Untied."

The Road to Animation

Hillenburg had originally planned to return to school for a master's degree in art. However, attending an animation festival shifted his trajectory entirely. Rather than enrolling in a traditional art program, he chose to study experimental animation at the California Institute of the Arts, where his thesis film Wormholes explored the theory of relativity. The film screened at festivals, and at one such event, Hillenburg crossed paths with Joe Murray, creator of Nickelodeon's Rocko's Modern Life. Murray was struck by the film's visual style and immediately offered Hillenburg a position. He joined the series as a director and eventually rose to producer and creative director by its fourth season. It was during this period that writer Martin Olson read The Intertidal Zone and urged Hillenburg to adapt its concept into a television series. Hillenburg had never seriously considered creating his own show, but Olson's suggestion crystallized the idea and set the project firmly in motion.

Birth of a Sponge

Hillenburg wanted his new series to break away from the buddy-comedy format dominating cartoons of the era, exemplified by shows like The Ren & Stimpy Show. His solution was to build the entire world around a single protagonist—the "weirdest" sea creature he could imagine: a sponge. The original design from The Intertidal Zone depicted Bob the Sponge resembling an actual sea sponge, and Hillenburg initially kept that look. For behavior, he drew from beloved innocent figures like Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Jerry Lewis, and Pee-wee Herman. Then came the pivotal design shift: modeling the character after a kitchen sponge, whose square shape perfectly matched the personality he envisioned. Patrick, Mr. Krabs, Pearl, and Squidward followed as the next characters. For the voice, Hillenburg turned to Tom Kenny, a fellow Rocko's Modern Life collaborator. The name "SpongeBoy" was scrapped after Nickelodeon's legal team discovered it was already trademarked, and the character settled on "SpongeBob," with "SquarePants" arriving when Kenny quipped about the sponge in square pants trying to land a fast-food job.

Building the Dream Team

Derek Drymon, who would serve as creative director for the first three seasons, noted that Hillenburg deliberately wanted to surround himself with a "team of young and hungry people." Many of the franchise's major contributors had already worked alongside Hillenburg on Rocko's Modern Life, including Drymon himself, art director Nick Jennings, supervising director Alan Smart, writer and voice actor Doug Lawrence (often credited as Mr. Lawrence), and Tim Hill, who helped develop the series bible. Drymon's inclusion, however, was not immediate. As a late addition to Rocko's Modern Life, he had not built a deep working relationship with Hillenburg before SpongeBob's conception. Hillenburg initially reached out to Drymon's storyboard partner, Mark O'Hare, but O'Hare had just launched the syndicated comic strip Citizen Dog and was unavailable. This left the door open for Drymon to step in, and his influence on the show's early creative direction proved substantial.