When I look for new games, I’m looking for an adventure. Searching high and loaf, following the trail of breadcrumbs, and proving myself in battle. Can this game rise to the occasion? Is this enough bread puns to lead into a review about a game where you play as a sentient bread boy? Born of Bread is a new adventure RPG from developers Dear Villagers where you are like Pinocchio but bread.
The game begins with one of my favorite B movie setups. A group of stuffy archaeologist types have stumbled upon a tomb of sorts and immediately opened it, releasing monsters into the world. The newly released beasties immediately hunt for something called Sunstone Shards. What are these, and what do they do? Nothing good. The worst thing about these monsters? They’re teenagers, and if My Chemical Romance taught us anything, it’s that teenagers are terrifying.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen of the royal castle, the royal baker is scrabbling to make food for the monarch. One of the “Queen’s guards” appears, saying the Queen would like different bread made from a recipe. This is definitely a recipe book and not a spellbook. This is, of course, perfectly reasonable, and when the recipe yields a living bread child that he names Loaf (he should have called it Breadly), the baker is not nearly as surprised as he should be. He’s surprised, but his consciousness doesn’t shatter like I think mine would if I baked a living bread child.
Shortly after this, the teenage monsters show up to steal a conveniently located Sunstone Shard. Because he has just created a real-life Pillsbury Dough Boy, the Queen thinks that Papa Baker is in on it. Thus begins Loaf’s adventures and a cornucopia of friends he meets on the way as he strives to prove his baker/dad’s innocence and stop the moody teenage monsters.
Before you can head out on your breadventure, you need a Saver. I initially thought it meant I needed a trained hero to accompany me, but that was not the case. No, a Saver is precisely what it sounds like. It’s a person that follows heroes around and records their progress in notebooks, i.e., saving. As you are a small pleb of a hero, you get a small pleb of a Saver in the form of Dub.
Dub is supposedly a dragon, but he is very small and derpy. He has, however, literally invented the internet and Wi-Fi in this realm. With Dub as your Saver, you need to find routers he has put up around the land to save, making it a little bit more annoying than if he could just write things down. His proficiency with his newly invented network also means that he essentially Twitch streams all your battles, big and small, and you can opt to view chat while fighting. Sometimes, Papa Baker will also send a message; if you do what he says, you will get extra points replenished. I don’t know how he is watching your streams from baker jail. It’s the equivalent of the audience watching you in the theater in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
Combat is turn-based, and you can use your base weapon to attack without spending will points, but anything stronger will require you to use them. All moves will also need you to perform some meter-filling timed action. Things like holding A and releasing it when the bar reaches the green section or rocking the joystick back and forth until the meter hits the green. Nothing too difficult, although for those with dexterity issues, some of them can be a little more difficult. You also get a wide range of companions who will come and go throughout your journey, each with different skills and drawbacks. With the mystical skill points, you can level them up with whatever build will work best for you.
The game has big Paper Mario vibes throughout. From the art style to the combat and items, through to the 2.5D graphics, you can feel the influence of the Paper Mario series, and that is in no way a bad thing, apart from the camera, which causes some depth perception problems when jumping, as is customary with this style of platformer. I also ran into some glitches on the Nintendo Switch version. In the first chapter, you are required to go into a mine, and at one point, you need to get flattened by a hydraulic press to pass under a barrier. It frequently didn’t trigger properly and just passed through me. I also got permanently trapped behind some of the scenic crystals and had to reload. That’ll teach me to jump.
There are plenty of jumping puzzles, fetch quests, and seek-and-find quests to keep young Loaf busy while he tries to save his baker/dad. Stopping a centuries-long feud between birds and badgers and finding the shapeshifted salamander children of a weirdo in the woods in return for skill points are just a few small things you will be doing. That is literally just in the first chapter.
It’s a charming adventure. Silly and filled with doughy puns, there’s a great feeling of nostalgia for the gameplay and cartoony art style. It’s fun to play and a definite contender for a game I would get my niece and nephew to give them something different from Roblox and Fortnite. That isn’t me being a curmudgeonly old woman; that’s just true.
Born of Bread is out now on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S
