Born of Bread Preview: Dough Boy Adventures

When you start Born of Bread, you immediately realise this isn’t a game you are taking seriously. Not because it doesn’t have a solid foundation, but because the silly humour is apparent from the beginning. Even though it starts off on an urgent note as most RPGs do, there’s no sense of panic. As you play through the game, there’s a funny adventure that keeps you entertained and wanting more.

While Born of Bread has simple RPG mechanics, it does add timing elements for damage and blocking. Those can be difficult to achieve, especially if you have no idea what’s supposed to happen. Stats and damage types aren’t clearly explained, and strengthening your characters is unintentionally difficult. But if you give the game a chance, there’s a funny and lighthearted adventure that promises a good time.

Born of Bread will be coming soon to Steam.

Story – Dough Boy Come to Life

Born of Bread starts on two fronts. The first is a supernatural group of demons is accidentally unleashed and they work to re-establish their kingdom. At the same time, a palace chef follows an unknown recipe to create a flour golem referring to the title. Instead of serving up his new creation, the chef decides to adopt the flour golem.

The demons discover the flour golem during their mission and you are thrown into the wilderness. Your goal is to get back home and strengthen yourself before the demons come back. Along the way, you will meet several allies and tackle several problems in the world around you.

Every meeting with the cast is comedic in some way.

The story itself isn’t too unique despite the premise of the flour golem. Many of the RPG story tropes seen in other games make an appearance here. There’s still plenty of time for the story to stand out, but the initial adventure doesn’t show you anything new. It’s still a traditional coming-of-age story that culminates in defeating the forces of evil.

What stands out in Born of Bread is the humour whose delivery is well-timed just like Baldur’s Gate 3. The jokes range from corny, cooking-related, and outright silly humour. It helps set the tone and lets you know the game doesn’t take itself too seriously. Character tropes are exaggerated for comedy and it fits what you would expect of their development.

Nothing in the story makes you feel like it was forced in; it’s told like a natural tale. That makes it easy to jump into and pick up again after a break. It’s a story that can make you smile at the strangest moments, reminding you to have fun throughout your time.

Gameplay – Platforming & Turn-Based RPG

Born of Bread’s exploration is platforming, where you explore the world in a 2.5D view. You can move left and right, but also up and down while jumping to obstacles. If you explore, new paths can open up, letting you find items or enemies to battle. There are also places that are initially out of reach, forcing you to use the environment or come back later.

You often revisit areas which makes it hard to permanently miss or forget about something. As you gain more allies, more areas open up for exploration and obstacles can be overcome. While depth is always an issue with platformers, the penalties for failure are rare. If you aren’t interested, you can always focus on the main adventure without missing anything vital.

Treasures are found if you go off the beaten path.

You can’t escape combat in Born of Bread and it’s turn-based combat. Everyone takes turns just like Monster Sanctuary and you use skills to get the advantage over enemies. Moves are performed through timing button presses which applies to guarding as well. Characters can level up and focus on some stat growths while learning new skills.

Unfortunately, combat isn’t as simple as it appears to be, with several aspects that aren’t clearly explained. There’s plenty of time for this to change, but it’s something that could use more improvement.

Combat – Difficult To Master

The tutorial for combat is straightforward and easy to understand. But several aspects haven’t been explained which makes things difficult. For example, you learn about turn order and how to switch your team around. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that the character in front will take an attack. Your flour golem continues to take damage even when someone else goes first.

This makes it difficult for the early game as your health is effectively whatever the flour golem’s is. Once it reaches zero, it’s game over even if other people are healthy. But this isn’t mentioned and it’s not easy to prepare for. While putting allies in the line of fire isn’t great, your flour golem might need some time to recover.

Matching the timing is nice but you must learn as you go.

Making moves time-based is similar to game such as Cris Tales, but that is tricky to execute because you don’t have any references. Even changing a move can drastically alter the timing activity. It’s tough to find a good balance in combat especially when traditional stores aren’t encountered until you make good progress.

Combat isn’t so hard that you can’t learn and get used to it. But it is harder than expected and you should conserve your resources. Otherwise, you might put yourself into an unwinnable situation in the early game that forces a restart.

Audio & Visuals – 2.5D Art at Its Best

Born of Bread is a great game to look at. While all characters are 2D, the environments are drawn with a mix of 2D and 3D art. Nature is wonderful to look at, the buildings look sturdy, and you almost never notice the mix. It feels like a pop-up picture book that you are interacting with, but with better transitions.

The music ties in with the comedic atmosphere as well. You don’t take anything too seriously because the music is a perfect fit. Even when the demons show up and chaos is afoot, there are still comedic elements to the background music. 

Born of Bread was previewed on Steam with a code provided by Plan of Attack.