So what happens after Bossa finish making their physics game about breaking peoples ribs with hammers and calling it surgery? Well instead of loafing around basking in their glory, they made a game about being a piece of bread. A physics based puzzle game with one goal, become toast!
Let’s start with how you go about controlling things. With the game being on PC, available currently on Early Access via Steam, keyboard and mouse are supported, but not recommended. To give yourself a much easier time of flinging your starchy self around, use a controller. Each shoulder button is mapped to a corresponding corner with which you can plant and cling, and the left analogue stick gets used to shift yourself around the environment.
What makes the game is the physics engine behind it. It allows you to do simple things like knock over a mug, or break open a jam jar, to flail around carrying a knife or even attach yourself to a ceiling fan and go for a ride. While humorous, it does have a tendency to sometimes completely freak out, but I’d chalk that up to early access more than a broken engine.
After all the fun, there is a goal that you have to achieve. So when you’ve finally gone around the room and toasted yourself, you get a rating based on a couple of factors. First and foremost, your edibility. Shown in the top left of the screen much like a health bar, this drops to zero, you’re restarting. Things like falling onto the kitchen floor will slowly reduce your edibleness, giving you time to panic and scurry away to safety.
Ants, breaking an egg on yourself, and loose toenail clippings attaching to you will damage you in chunks, so it’s best to steer clear of them all. And then falling into a bin, diving into the sink or going flat into the cats litter box are all pretty much instant kills. Deliciousness is your other main factor, which gets improved by smearing yourself onto butter, jam and honey. Or even picking up cereal and liquorice allsorts and having them stick. Then there’s the obvious scoring method, your time. These combine to give you a final rating, which is them put onto a global leader board. So maybe you could get competitive with your friends about your bread tossing abilities, who knows?
As previously stated the game is in early access, so content is limited currently. But enough to see where they want to go with the game. So far there are four levels and four different ways in which to achieve your goal of being burned up ; kitchen, lounge, bedroom, bathroom. I expect that as time progresses there will be more things to come and more levels added. Bossa have also teased the idea of going to unexpected and crazy places, so if Surgeon Simulator is anything to go off, we could be slapping bread around in space come early next year, when the game is planning to launch.
I Am Bread is a silly concept no doubt, and the longevity of the title isn’t going to be stellar regardless of how many levels they put in. But it is still a fun time regardless, and sometimes surprisingly challenging…I’m looking at you Bedroom level! The best thing about this game is showing it to friends though. People slowly first get to grips with the controls as they work their way around the kitchen table, but within ten or so minutes, have usually adjusted to how the game works mechanically, and are swinging around the room like a flatter, more starchy Spiderman.
Overall, the game does what it sets out to do. It’s a fun tale of a single slice of bread trying to make its way in the world. Physics in the game are silly and unrealistic, but that’s the charm of it. Scaling tall washing machines and slinging yourself over a chasm between the microwave and the toaster. It’s also great fun with friends, as you’ll all laugh at failed attempts and how generally silly the game is. But I imagine it won’t be for everybody. Longevity is not a strong point of the title currently, with only 4 levels to show as of writing, and the gameplay itself isn’t going to change drastically or suddenly become much harder.
+ You’re a slice of bread
+ Great physics sandbox to play around in
– Not much content (currently)
– Gameplay will probably get a bit stale (sorry) after a while.
battlemisfit.com 