Have you ever wondered what happens to that innocent loaf of bread when you're not looking? The antics the baguette gets up to when your back's turned? How about that bagel? It's always looked like a bit of a troublemaker to us... If you answered "no", then congratulations, you're probably sane - which is more than can be said for whoever came up with the idea for I Am Bread, a game which is essentially a kind of Toy Story-esque tale, about an array of yeasty products, and what they get up to when no-one else is around...
As it turns out, much like most humans, a slice of bread is never satisfied with what its got. In fact, it wants nothing more than to become a slice of toast - and it'll do anything to make its dreams reality. Handily, this is where you come in, as with the aid of a deliberately awkward, Octodad style control system, it's up to you to navigate your slice of bread from one end a room to the other, avoiding all manner of deadly obstacles as you go, with the intent of toasting yourself to a nice, crispy brown.
The control scheme in action. Hold the shoulder buttons to "glue" that bit to the floor and pivot.
Were it so easy. It turns out there's a variety of things working to make your life that little bit harder in I Am Bread, not least of which is the control scheme. Rather than just pushing the analogue stick to make your bread slide/flip forwards, things are a bit more complex, as instead, each corner of your slice is marked up with one of your controller's shoulder buttons (L1/L2/R1/R2). By holding these buttons, you can "stick" that corner to the floor, and the use the left stick to make your bread pivot around that point. And this is how you make your way through each of the game's levels - slowly, awkwardly, and while trying not to twist your fingers into some kind of pretzel.
Of course, it's not just the control scheme that you've got to worry about. A large part of the issue here is finding something you can actually toast yourself on. When you first start each level, a large part of your time will be spent simply looking around the place, trying to figure out what you might be able to cook yourself on, yet alone figuring out how to actually get there. From the obvious (grills and toasters) to the more obscure (hair dryers) and the frankly dangerous (a rocket??), each level has a variety of the normal, and unusual ways to toast yourself - it's just up to you to figure out the whats and hows of each level.
Can you see anything that might toast you?
And then, there's perhaps the most important bit - your edibility. If the game were simply a race to the finish, where you didn't have to worry about dragging yourself through the dirt, mould, water and insects (yes, really), it'd be just that little bit too easy. So instead, not only do you have to wrestle with the controls at the same time as trying to figure out where to go next - you've got to watch out for anything that may dirty or otherwise make you unclean, too. From bits of dirt and stray hairs to the aforementioned ants and grime, every bit of grub you pick up will take a chunk off your edibility meter (and touching the floor will drain it like there's no tomorrow), until it's game over. On the flip side, if you want a really good score, you'll also have to try and make yourself tastier, too, hunting out butter, jam, and other assorted condiments in the room before you make your final steps towards toastdom.
And weirdly enough, it actually kind of works. With a light-hearted atmosphere, and "take as much time as you want" gameplay (so long as you're not too worried about getting a great score), it's actually kind of fun trying to figure out how to make your bread move in the right direction. Of course, there is one big problem, as the icons that show you which button's which are way too small. Holding L1 rather than R1 and sending yourself plummeting to your doom because of it isn't much fun, and it's something that could have been avoided by making things that little bit clearer.
Brilliantly, though, getting your bread to be toasty is just one of the many modes on offer in I am Bread. In fact, there's another four modes on offer (five if you count free play), each with seven levels to attempt. There's bagel race, which sees you steering a bagel around a track like it's some sort of tyre; Rampage, which puts you in charge of a very angry baguette that needs to smash as many things as possible; Cheese Hunt, which asks you to take charge of a very fragile cracker, as it attempts to gather cheese; and perhaps the weirdest of them all (no small feat in a game about sentient bread), Zero G, which straps a load of rocket boosters to your humble slice of bread, and asks you to fly through a zero g stage to find something to turn you into toast. It's every bit as bonkers and it sounds - and a lot of fun.
Well, that's one way to get toasted...
That said, it's probably worth noting that I am Bread isn't for everyone. How well you get on with the game will depend on how much fun you can derive from struggling with a control system that's been made deliberately hard, just to make things that little bit trickier. The slice of bread isn't even the worst - the baguette seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to handling, and often simply refuses to turn when you tell it to (which is, perhaps, because it's a baguette). The four player mode, which we had hoped would deliver all manner of hilarity isn't quite as good as we'd hoped, either, as rather than forcing you all to only control one corner of the bread, it doesn't really put any limits on you at all, meaning you can all grab and let go of the same corners, turning it into something of a free for all.
Still, at a decent price, and with plenty of fun to be had, I am Bread is worth a flutter. As at least the second craziest game you'll play this year, it's an original creation if nothing else, and one that provides plenty of good times.
Format Reviewed: Playstation 4
