English developers are known for delivering innovative – yet quirky – games. From the early days of Lemmings and Worms to the more recent classics like Timesplitters and LittleBigPlanet – the Brits really do seem to know how to make people laugh, all the while testing their wits. But of all the quirky games that have come out of the UK over the years, probably the wackiest is the newest game from Bossa Studios in which the gamer takes on the role of a slice of bread with no other purpose in life but to become perfectly toasted.
Everybody has to have a goal, right?
As crazy as it sounds, the basic premise of the I Am Bread couldn’t be simpler; a slice of bread is left sitting on the table of a fully rendered three-dimensional room that contains some heat source with which it can be toasted. With the controller’s analog sticks, the gamer pans the camera in search of a said source of heat (toaster, torch, heater, etc.), and then using the controller’s shoulder buttons and triggers (correlating to the four corners of the bread) rotates, flips, cartwheels, drags, and otherwise maneuvers the bread to the heat source.
The complexity comes in the fact that the bread and the toaster are typically located on two distant and raised surfaces (kitchen table, countertop, stoves). This means that the gamer must figure out a way to get from one surface to the other, all the while minimizing the amount of contact time with surfaces that will render the slice inedible based on the onscreen “edibility meter” (muddy floors, broken glass, grease). Think of it as a virtual test of the universal 5-second rule.
To make the gameplay work, the bread has been gifted with the magical power to cling to vertical surfaces, allowing it to ascend walls, cupboards, cabinets, and appliances in its quest to get rightly toasted. The bread can also employ vehicles, like a skateboard, to traverse the dirty floor in relative safety. On the flipside, the bread has also been granted with the strength to shatter everyday glass and porcelain objects, making a quick mess a neatly set table and leaving debris that render the bread inedible.
The overall presentation if fairly basic; there is a story arc following a distressed homeowner who is continually finding rooms of his house destroyed by what he believes to be intruders with the calling card is to leave behind a slice of bread. The visual quality is on par with Bossa Studio’s previous release, Surgeon Simulator – or for that matter any number of other multi-ported PC games quirky games of this ilk, which is to say the visuals and audio is rather generic. Polygons are basic and faceted, colors are dull and muted, clipping is rampant, and lighting effects are all but nonexistent. The audio is similarly generic, although the be-boppy piano-led soundtrack is noticeably more enjoyable than the stock audio that generally comes with games of this ilk.
Sadly, it is in the frustrating controls where the I Am Bread falls flat on its buttered face. As mentioned earlier, each corner of the bread is mapped to a specific shoulder button. Using combinations of buttons, gamers can get the bread to flip, cartwheel, or pivot about corners and edges. The problem arises in that the mapping pre-assigned and is regardless of the visual perspective, so it’s often difficult to keep track of which button relates to which corner once the bread has flipped and rotated a few times. There are onscreen cues, but they don’t help all that much, so there’s always a sense of trial and error in trying to figure out which button combo will result in the desired movement. The fact that there are time limits and edibility meters to contend with only make the confusing mechanic that much more frustrating.
The game does offer a number of mini-games – a couple of which are actually more enjoyable that the main game. Bagel Racing is easily the highlight of I Am Bread, in which gamers take the role of rolling (nice pun) a bagel around a ridiculously difficult obstacle course in an effort to hit all checkpoints. The 2-button controls are far more intuitive in Bagel Racing than the 4-button controls of the main story, which definitely helps with the overall enjoyment. Baguette Rampage is another fantastically enjoyable mini-game, which tasks gamers with smashing everything in sight as a long loaf of French bread – again, the two-button easier controls definitely help amp up the enjoyment level.
I Am Bread is a wacky and inventive title that stumbles in its own complexity. More fun is to be had in sharing the game’s ridiculousness with friends, than in actually seeing it through to the end. While this might be palatable at a sub-$5 price point, the current $13 MSRP is a little tough to stomach.
