The fact that we live in a world where games are created simply to be played on YouTube channels is insane. Look on Steam and you’ll find countless “Simulator” games, almost all of which can be traced back to Surgeon Simulator. What made that game so special, and what many games in the “Funny Simulator” genre simply don’t get, is that Surgeon Simulator was genuinely funny and a decent game. But there have been few games that have captured the spirit of this game since its release. The developer behind Surgeon Simulator, Bossa Studios, is hoping that lightning will strike twice with their latest release, I Am Bread, which has just exited Early Access and is now available as a full release.

I Am Bread sees you playing as a piece of bread in its quest to become toast. You start in one area of a map and need to puzzle out which items in the environment will heat you up so you become toast. Along the way, you can fall onto the floor or get dirt on you which causes you to become inedible.

What’s crazy about I Am Bread, though, is how it really isn’t about your bread, but rather about the owner of this loaf of bread being driven mad by this living loaf of bread. As the game progresses, you are given small notes about how the owner is going through therapy and how he’s being driven insane. It’s hard to remember a game ever telling a story quite like this. The fact that this game creates a lore and ends with one of the most insane twists in a “comedy” video game makes it all that much more clear that Bossa put a lot of work into it.

In many ways, I Am Bread is the Shadow of the Colossus of the comedy bread simulation world. When using a controller, you use all of your shoulder buttons in order to grip onto environments. As you climb, you have a grip meter that runs out. It leads to moments similar to those in Shadow of the Colossus where you climb the environment and barely reach the top of an area, only to lose your grip and fall. It’s oddly stressful when you consider that it’s a comedy bread simulator.

Since the initial Early Access release, there have been a number of things added. The most important to the story mode, aside from new levels, is the addition of Marmalade. After you die two times in a level, you will see a glowing jar of Marmalade and using it will give you infinite grip and edibility. Your score automatically will be lowered but you still have the challenge of finding a way to toast yourself. It is extremely welcome when one simple mistake can cost you ten minutes of progress.

There are also new modes added for each level. One mode sees you playing as a loaf of french bread trying to destroy as much as possible in an environment. Another has you racing through a makeshift race course in each level. One has you playing as a cracker looking for cheese. However, the most complex and insane mode is the zero gravity mode.

Imagine you are a piece of bread with miniature rockets strapped to yourself. Each of these rockets have a specific direction assigned to it. Your objective is still to become toast, but doing so with all of these different rockets makes it insanely difficult. Add to that the fact that each level has this mode available to it and it makes I Am Bread probably the deepest “joke” game ever.

Bossa Studios clearly know how to make “Joke Simulation” games very well and I Am Bread is proof of that. There’s an insane level of depth required to master it but behind that depth is a fascinating premise. It’s incredibly fun and proves that these YouTube fodder games can be especially well made.

SCORE: 9.0 out of 10

A code for I Am Bread was provided to Pixel Related for review.