I am Bread

With I am Bread Bossa Studios has attempted to follow in the footsteps of comedy sensations like Goat Simulator and their own Surgeon Simulator by creating a game where you throw around a slice of bread in sandbox levels. Of course, it's just as silly as it sounds. But it doesn't get truly absurd until you've tried it firsthand. What we had no clue about as we ventured into the world of flying bread was how cumbersome and trying this game was, and how rather than laughing at the silliness we found ourselves cursing.

The objective here is to move your bread to whichever place in the room is going to do the heating in order to create glorious toast as smoothly and with as little mess as possible. The controls make this more of a challenge than we first expected. The edges of the bread work a bit like sticky tentacles, which means it can climb up vertical walls with minimum effort and even pick up small objects along the way.

The shoulder buttons LT/RT and LB/RB control a corner each and with equal amounts of precision, skill and practice the idea is that you will be able to move like a ninja through the levels. Let's be honest here; forget about that as you're more likely to learn how to play the violin in the time it will take you to master these controls.

If you're not great at moving your piece of bread around (and you won't be) you will collect dust, ants and glass shards. If the bread is too dirty you will lose, and this means the game quickly turns into a bit of a labyrinth where the objective is to not touch the floor. You have two meters to constantly keep an eye on - one measures if the bread is still edible, the other measures your grip. Even if your super sandwich is an elite climber it can't cling on forever. After a while you lose your grip and if you happen to find yourself above the kitty litter box or a bucket of water, you're edibility rating will fall and you'll have to start over from the beginning. Once again.

If you tire of Story Mode there is a whole range of other modes to engage in. These are rarely great, but at least they offer different experiences. "Rampage" is where you create total chaos with a baguette - and it's perfect for short comedic breaks, although it doesn't have the same sort of tactical appeal as Story Mode. The next best of the alternative modes is "Zero G". A piece of bread sporting a jetpack floats around in a vacuum and you're tasked with getting that healthy toasty tan without bumping into nearby objects. This mode forces you to unlearn what you have learned about the controls in order to progress through later levels, but it's a lot more calming to float around the environments.

The checkpoint race "Bagle Race" is simply too mundane and it lacks the edge the rest of the game offers. In our opinion it should have been cut out of it completely. "Cheese Hunt" is a mode where you're a piece of hard bread looking for bits of cheese, but it feels a bit contrived. Finally there's "Free Roam" which allows you to play without any proper objective as you explore the environments.

I am Bread is charming in places. We appreciate the music and the nice design as much as well like the rather insane concept. Sadly the frustration brought on by the game was enough to completely ruin the experience for us. The sense of accomplishment as we finally reach the finish line isn't as strong as it ought to be and we're left asking ourselves if we're being entertained as we toss a slice of bread around. Most of the time the answer is a simple "no".

I am Bread lives solely on some unforgiving mechanics that don't allow any room for mistakes. It's ultimately very fair, but it's also very cumbersome in a way that will make it very frustrating. Naturally this concept is firmly aimed at the "YouTube generation" and the controls and concept are already a major success, but truth be told it's a lot more fun watching others play this than actually playing it yourself.