It's the greatest thing since sliced...nevermind.
Brought to us by the same minds that gave us Surgeon Simulator 2013, I Am Bread is a game where you are bread. More specifically, you're a slice of bread attempting to maneuver its way to a heat source to become toast. The goal is to be quick and nimble, transforming into a scrumptious piece of doughy byproduct without overcooking yourself. Along the way, you have to avoid touching anything that could spoil you, from grimy floors, kitty litter, and especially water.
However, your existence as a sentient piece of bread does not go totally unnoticed. Mr. Murton, the man who owns the house you traverse, begins to suspect you're no ordinary little wheat germ. But he's also a geriatric man with a grudge against the city council who vexes him. A regular visitor of the Therapy Barn to deal with stress, his therapist thinks he's going senile when he tries to explain how his house is being routinely trashed each day by a chunk of toasted bread.
The game has a wide variety of interactive objects in the house that you find yourself in. You could be dropping a bowling ball on a TV in one level, to cooking yourself on hair curlers in another. All to reach the goal of being toast. Yes, it's exactly as bizarre as it sounds.
A part of the Early Access program on Steam, it was released fully on the 9th of April, 2015. Its page can be found here
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On June 13, 2021, Bossa Studios released a demo for the sequel, I Am Fish, which is about controlling a fish trying to make its way back to the sea. The full game launched later that year.
I am Tropes!
- Anthropomorphic Food: You are an inexplicably ambulatory slice of bread that can somehow hold onto objects by your corners.
- Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp":
- When playing as the bread, you don't have a health bar. You have an Edibility bar. It drains from touching the floor or anything gross (cobwebs, ants...). You also lose edibility if you overcook yourself.
- In Cheese Hunt when you play as the crispbread. It has an Integrity bar, but the only way to lose integrity is hitting a surface too hard, after which it starts to crack apart.
- This trope is even more glaring in Starch Wars; your health is still called Edibility, but you lose it by crashing into asteroids/Rye Fighters and getting shot.
- Calling Card: In the psychiatric treatment notes preceding the start of the Bedroom level, Mr. Murton initially seems to think that somebody is breaking into his house and leaving the toasted bread as one of these.
- The Cameo: In the epilogue, you use the bread to startle Mr. Murton into crashing his car. The camera holds on the wreckage, before a car is heard pulling up. After that, what should reach through the car door but the arm of Nigel Burke himself?
- Cassandra Truth: As the game progress, Mr. Burton is trying to warn people in The Therapy Barn that the bread is alive and causing chaos with its attempt to be toasted to no avail, which is not helped with his record of being stressed out.
- Continuity Nod: Not for I Am Bread but for Team Fortress 2 in the TF2 bonus level. You have the option to teleport our slice of bread to try and progress through the stage. If you do, you manifest the same Sickly Green Glowing tumors that affected the teleported bread in the Expiration Date short.
- Cool, but Inefficient: Many of the ways you can toast yourself. For instance, in one level you can climb boxes, a bookcase, and fling yourself across shelves to drop a bowling ball on the TV below, causing it to overheat, or you can toast yourself on the nearby space heater, which takes significantly less effort.
- Crossover: Like Surgeon Simulator 2013 before it, this game had a level based around Team Fortress 2 created after its release. This level has you navigate to the fridge and set yourself down on a half-made Sandvich to complete it.
- Difficult, but Awesome: In the case of the TV, getting A++ is far easier with it than with the space heater. The latter is vertically aligned, so you have a harder time getting an even toast. The TV is flat, so you can just drop on it and flip when one side is ready. It's just a matter of getting over there.
- Easy-Mode Mockery: Making use of the Magic Marmalade that appears if you die too often will trash your rank.
- Excuse Plot: Why are you a piece of bread traversing the environment to toast yourself? Who cares? The real focus is on trying to navigate the place and stay edible enough to be toasted. On the other hand, Mr. Burton is aware of the bread's antics, but nobody believes him.
- Fragile Speedster: The crispbread in the Cheese Hunt game mode is far more quick and nimble, but cracks upon a hard impact and shatters apart if its integrity drops to zero.
- Game-Breaking Bug: It's possible to inadvertently clip your bread through objects, leaving you stuck and forcing you to restart.
- Gameplay Grading: You get a letter grade at the end of each level, along with a bread pun.
- Hurricane of Puns: The game hits you with a pun relating to bread upon successful completion of a level. For example, doing well might yield "Self-raising the bar". Doing poorly might result in "Kneads improvement". Also, the books on the bookshelf in the living room are all titled with bread puns, as are the videos dotted around the rooms.
- I Am the Noun: A title example.
- Lampshade Hanging: The notes from the Therapy Barn at the beginning of each level in the main campaign serve as a massive lampshade hanging of the absurdity of the fact that the bread can even move of its own accord, let alone do what it does in each level.
- Life Meter: Your "Edibility" and "Integrity" meters serve as these.
- Lightning Bruiser: The Baguette in Rampage Mode. Tough to take out? Check—it has no Edibility/Integrity bar, making it impossible to "die". Fast moving? Check—No Grip meter and only two buttons make movement very easy compared to the Bread/Cracker. Powerful? Check—The whole point of Rampage Mode is to destroy everything in your path, and the previous two points make this much easier with the Baguette than the Bread/Cracker.
- Macro Zone: Every single level, given that you are a slice of bread.
- Mercy Mode: Added in the full release, becoming inedible too many times will allow the player to collect some Magic Marmalade. Not only does this make your bread sparkly, your grip and edibility both become infinite, essentially making the player invincible. Naturally, your rank will nosedive if you do this.
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Nintendo Hard: You thought surgery was hard? Try being bread. - One-Hit Kill: If the bread lands in water, it's an (almost) instant game over, since soggy bread will crumble apart.
- Press Start to Game Over: The bathroom level starts you directly above a sink, which you can (and probably will, on your first try) fall into for an instant failure.
- Shout-Out:
- The puns in the Zero-G levels all pertain to Star Wars. Do well? "The Force is strong in this bun." Do badly? "I have a bap feeling about this..."
- The bedroom level contains an inexplicably-animate swivel lamp.
- Slippery Skid: Coating the bread with butter makes it slippery, causing your basic nudges to send you much further at the cost of control.
- Some Dexterity Required: Worse than its predecessor in this regard. At least in Surgeon Simulator 2013, the controls matched to your fingers. You'll have quite the time adapting to four corners which can be anywhere at any given moment.
- Sticky Situation: Coating yourself in jelly causes you to adhere to surfaces without having to grip. It can be a bit harder to get around, but it's worth the ability to traverse walls without having to drop for a rest.
- Stuff Blowing Up: In the Petrol Station, rather than become toast directly, you end up exposing flammable gas/petroleum to a spark. Take a wild guess how that goes. Although this still toasts you and completes the level! It said to become toast, but it never said how!
- Super Drowning Skills: As mentioned above under One-Hit Kill, landing in water causes you to die (almost) instantly. Justified, given that you're, well, a slice of bread.
- Space Zone:
- All of the Zero-G levels. And your bread has tiny rockets attached to it!
- The Starch Wars bonus level.
- Stealth Prequel: The whole game is heavily implied to be this to Surgeon Simulator 2013, with the game ended with Mr. Burton (which his first name revealed to be Bob) goes into a car accident due to being startled by the bread, before eventually discovered by presumably none other than Nigel Burke himself and closed off with a snippet of the main theme from that game.
- Wall Crawl: Your basic means of movement up walls.
- Wreaking Havok: This game is not shy about flaunting its physics.
I am not toast!
I'm not eating that.
I'm not eating that.
