I Am Bread Review

It’s finally time to review I Am Bread, and as I sit here I realize that I don’t have the dough to hire someone to make up any witty bread puns for this review. Now before you loafs get a rise out of that last bad joke I will forewarn you that this game is definitely a novelty one. The game title says it all, you literally play as a sentient piece of bread whose objective is to get toasted without losing too much tastiness. Much like the previous game made by Bossa Studios, Surgeon Simulator, this game is built to contort your fingers until they’re as twisted as a pretzel.

This game is all about getting toasted, which is exactly how it sounds. You must literally work your way across messy rooms, kitchens, and other levels to get your piece of bread toasted on whatever hot object you can find. If you find yourself near a jar of jam you should make sure to bust that jar open and cover yourself in that goey goodness. You will have your path blocked by water-filled sinks and nasty little ants that want nothing more than to take a bite out of your sweet yeasty flavor-fullness. The more damage you suffer while travelling through the levels, the less tasty you will be by the time you get toasted. Touching the floor with your bread is one of the worst offenses and will cause you to lose health and tastiness extremely fast. It actually made me physically ill to drag my minions through an enormous group of ants and still have my bread be considered tasty with about five ants clinging to it.

I will start by saying that the controls in this game will aggravate you to no end. Much like Surgeon Simulator the controls are jam-packed with some very interesting contortions for your hand. You use 1, 2, 3, 4 to control which corners of your bread will stick to the various objects filling the level. The game creators recommend that you use a controller for this game and I wholeheartedly agree, otherwise expect a lot of frustration as the controls will drive you wholemeal.

The soundtrack for I Am Bread is nothing to write home about as it’s basically elevator music. To add on to the novelty of controlling a piece of bread you are also rewarded with the sound of suction cups as you force your bread to stick to the wall. The rest of the sound effects for the game are rather generic and when taking damage I expected some kind of dramatic music at the very least.

When the game starts to drive you insane with its aggravating controls you will find the humor behind playing as a piece of bread begins to wear off. After finishing a few of the levels I found myself growing bored with the repetitive gameplay without much variety added to it. This can be expected when your only goal is to get a piece of bread toasted, however I was hoping that there would be more active enemies that would actually chase my piece of bread across the level or something.

With the release of the new game mode, Starch Wars, Bossa Studios tried to add some more fun to the game. You enter a field of asteroids as a Star Wars Bread Cruiser that must destroy enemy bagels flying around you. It falls flat on its face when you realize that flying a piece of bread through space gets old fast, much like moving a piece of bread across a room. Sadly the novelty wears off and just feels like another idea tacked on just to pull people in for another five minutes.

Overall, I Am Bread is one of those games that has all of the novelty of Goat Simulator, meaning it’s fun for a bit but eventually just becomes frustrating and exceedingly repetitive. There are certainly some funny moments to be had in this game, however as soon as the novelty of controlling a piece of bread  wears off, you are going to find yourself losing interest very quickly. I would have to say that for 13.99 CAD this game is not worth picking up unless Humble Bundle of some other company decides to put it on sale as there is just not enough variety to make it worth the full price. The devs tried to make a game that was second to naan, unfortunately it all falls a bit flatbread.