Controlling your bread slice is awkward, even after a ton of practice, and while that’s funny novelty at first, eventually it gets on your nerves. There’s nothing more frustrating than making an enormous trek up a wall or across a level, then having your grip meter run out and you falling to the floor for a game over. Hang on too long and you drop like a rock, which can make escalating walls or surfaces a painful balance of stop-and-go, or worse, 52-pickup. There’s a grip meter, which decreases the more you hang on with the grip buttons, very much like (and I can’t believe I’m comparing this game to it) Shadow of the Colossus. You can get some laughs out of squirming and shaking throughout each level, but it’s when other gameplay elements enter that things get rough. I Am Bread is intentionally designed to be a frustrating spin on QWOP, following in the hilariously awkward controls of Surgeon Simulator. When it hits 0%, it’s game over and back to start. After you find a source of heat, you must toast both sides of yourself to finish the stage, but if you hang out around dirty floors or other areas where you can be contaminated, your Edibility will decrease. With careful rhythm of locking and releasing, you can “walk” around the house. Holding down the button when against a surface locks the corner in place. Each corner of the slice is controlled with a specific button (or key).

Your bread, however, is controlled in an unorthodox way.

It’s as insane as it sounds, following in Bossa tradition. It’s your goal to wander around various locations, find a source of heat to toast yourself and finish each stage. You don’t play as this man, but instead, the bread that is terrorizing his psyche. Deemed mentally unstable, the man is sent to the Therapy Barn on a routine basis. I Am Bread follows a man who believes that the bread he keeps around his house is sentient. Is it an indie gem or just another bit of YouTube bait for the Let’s Play pond? Their newest game, I Am Bread, has been in Early Access for a while, but finally got a full release. They’re usually nothing substantial, but Bossa Studios’ Surgeon Simulator was able to join the likes of Slender: The Eight Pages and Five Nights at Freddy’s to become a flawed, yet goofy game to stream or record. During the last few years, a special classification of games arose called “YouTube bait.” Arguably pioneered by the stellar Amnesia: The Dark Descent, these games are usually indie oddities built to appeal to the spastic world of Let’s Players, bringing out goofy reactions despite their low budgets or simple gameplay.