I Am Bread

I joined Bossa Studios in March 2015 shortly before the release of I Am Bread. I helped get the game out of the door and worked on several DLC updates as well as the mobile ports.

BASE GAME

Balancing – Difficulty balancing the grade thresholds for all five game modes (Story, Bagel, Rampage, Cheese Hunt and Zero G) using data gathered from internal playtesting.

Rampage Mode – Baguette rampage was one of the weaker modes outside of story. To strengthen it I added loads of “smashables” including plates and vases to make it a more cathartic experience. I also designed a combo meter which rewarded players for smashing many objects in quick succession. This made the mode much more fun, although it did have an adverse affect on performance on weaker machines.

STARCH WARS

Concept Development – Worked with Charles Ali (Gameplay Programmer) and Andy Green (Technical Artist) to cook-up a concept of a lean update we could pull together in a fortnight, just in time for May the 4th (aka Star Wars Day)

Audio Design – Dusted off my audio gloves and created a suite of SFX for the update; everything from the swooping roar of nearby “Rye Fighters” to the laser cannons, explosions and thrusters.

TEAM FORTRESS 2

Level Design – collaborated with Charles Ali to create a pen-and-paper level design (on a whiteboard) which was then implemented in Unity using Pro Builder.

MOBILE

Touch Controls – The original PC version of I Am Bread was built specifically around a kinaesthetic gamepad-centric control scheme which made use of the four shoulder/trigger buttons on modern controllers. Working in collaboration with Senior Programmer Mohammad Dabiri we prototyped several iterations of Bread’s touch controls before settling on the finished version.

UX/UI – The original controls were built for traditional setups and the UX/UI had to be completely re-worked to be suitable for touch. Building on the experience i’d gained working on I AM PLAYR I wireframed every screen in the game including the in-game HUD. Once we had a version we were functionally happy with, these were given a pass by our in-house UI artist at the time, Klaudia Kovaks.

Balancing – The original version of the game had a “Grip” meter which would slowly drain as you climbed and refill while you weren’t climbing. This proved to be too punishing in the mobile version and so we removed it, shifting player focus squarely to maintaining “Edibility” as they traversed the levels.

Scoring System – The original games scoring system graded the player A++ to F based on an arcane formula. For the mobile ports I divised a more transparent system which expose the criteria to players giving them clear time and edibility targets to work towards to improve their grade. This system was later patched-in to the PC and console versions as it was widely preferred.

IMPACT

Sales – I Am Bread sold over 2.5 units across SKUs and is the best-selling title I’ve worked on.

YouTubers – The game was a viral sensation and was played by some of the biggest YouTubers of the time including PewDiePie and JackSepticEye.

Troy Baker – Bizarrely, Gamespot produced a video of renowned voice actor Troy Baker performing the role of Bread!

WRAP IT UP

Bread was a fun project to work on as my welcome to Bossa Studios and my introduction to my long-time collaborator Charles Ali.

I’m proud of the weird, silly game we made together.