Bread & Fred
Last updated: 2025-08-05
- Highly fun and entertaining co-op platformer
- Challenging tethered penguin climbing gameplay
- Charming art style and visuals
- Broken online multiplayer and widespread bugs
- Causes relationship strain due to difficulty
- Limited content and niche co-op experience
Emotions
Players experienced significant frustration primarily due to pervasive technical issues, including game-breaking bugs, severe lag, frequent disconnections, and non-functional online multiplayer and co-op modes. This was compounded by the game's extreme difficulty, unforgiving mechanics, and poor checkpoint systems, often leading to loss of progress and an inability to play or advance.
Disappointment stemmed from the game failing to meet expectations, largely due to its broken multiplayer functionality, unaddressed bugs, and overall unplayability. Players felt the game had unfulfilled potential, especially regarding its co-op experience, and were let down by misleading advertising and a perceived lack of developer action to fix critical issues.
Satisfaction was derived from the game's unique and challenging cooperative gameplay, often leading to rewarding experiences when players successfully coordinated and overcame obstacles. Positive aspects included the game's art style, music, and the ability to strengthen relationships through shared achievement, especially when utilizing features like checkpoints.
Amusement frequently arose from the game's humorous impact on player relationships, often leading to exaggerated arguments and funny moments during challenging co-op sessions. The contrast between the game's cute aesthetic and its extreme difficulty, along with shared struggles and failures, contributed to a sense of ironic enjoyment and self-deprecating humor.
Joy was experienced through successful cooperative play, leading to laughter, shared triumphs, and strengthened bonds with friends or partners. Players found delight in the game's charming aesthetics, engaging challenges, and the overall positive experience of navigating its unique mechanics together, especially when reaching significant milestones like completing the game.
Verdict
Mostly negative
Summary
Positive 53% · Negative 47%. Score: 47 / 100
Positives:
- Players overwhelmingly find the game to be incredibly fun and entertaining, especially when played with friends, partners, or family. The cooperative gameplay often leads to laughter, memorable moments, and a sense of shared accomplishment, even amidst humorous frustration.
- The game is recognized as a challenging yet rewarding 2D cooperative platformer. Players appreciate its pure platforming mechanics, solid controls, and the option to adjust difficulty, making it accessible while still offering a significant challenge.
- The game receives high praise for its visual appeal, including its beautiful and cute art style, charming characters, and pleasant color palette. The pixel art is particularly highlighted as adorable and well-designed.
- The game's multiplayer functionality, including online play (especially via Steam Remote Play) and local co-op, works well and is a major source of enjoyment. The inclusion of a single-player mode is also appreciated, making it a complete experience.
- The checkpoint system, particularly the ability for players to place flags almost anywhere, is a highly valued feature. It significantly reduces frustration and allows players to tailor the difficulty to their preference, making the game more enjoyable.
Negatives:
- The most prevalent issue reported is the severely broken and unreliable online multiplayer. Players experience constant disconnections, inability to join or host lobbies, extreme lag, desync issues, and game-breaking bugs specific to co-op, making the game largely unplayable online. This has been a long-standing problem that developers have not addressed.
- Beyond multiplayer, the game is plagued by numerous bugs and glitches across all modes, including game-breaking issues that prevent progress, cause crashes, or lead to loss of save data. Players report unresponsive controls, visual glitches, and general instability, indicating a lack of polish and ongoing technical debt.
- The game's extreme difficulty and frustrating mechanics often lead to significant emotional distress for players, particularly in co-op. Many reviews humorously (or seriously) mention the game causing arguments, straining relationships, and leading to intense rage and frustration, making it an unpleasant experience for many.
- The game is perceived as excessively difficult, with a steep learning curve and punishing mechanics. A major point of frustration is the hidden or non-default checkpoint system, which, if not enabled, forces players to restart from the very beginning after a single mistake, leading to immense frustration and wasted time.
- Players find the game's content to be limited and short, especially for its price. The single-player experience is often described as tedious and less engaging than co-op, and the game requires a specific type of coordinated and patient co-op partner to be enjoyable, limiting its appeal.
Gameplay:
- The game is widely considered very difficult, requiring high levels of precision, timing, and coordination, especially in co-op. Mistakes are heavily punished, often leading to significant progress loss and frustration. Many players find the single-player mode even harder than co-op.
- The core gameplay revolves around two adorable penguins, Bread and Fred, tethered by a rope, climbing a perilous mountain. Players must use physics-based mechanics like swinging and inertia, along with precise timing and communication, to ascend.
- The game offers various 'assist options' or 'cheats' accessible through settings, such as infinite jumps and a portable checkpoint system. These features can significantly reduce difficulty, though some players feel they detract from the intended challenge.
- The game is fundamentally a cooperative experience, designed to be played with a friend. It emphasizes teamwork, communication, and synchronization, often testing the patience and coordination of players.
- The game is a 2D precision platformer, often compared to titles like Celeste, Jump King, or Getting Over It. It focuses heavily on synchronized jumps and strategic navigation through obstacles to reach higher ground.
Performance:
- Many players report severe and consistent lag, stuttering, and high latency in online multiplayer, even with excellent internet connections and low reported ping. This significantly impacts the playability and enjoyment of the game's online features.
- The game is plagued by numerous bugs and critical issues, particularly within its online multiplayer mode. Players experience softlocks, character freezing, and general instability, indicating poor optimization and coding.
- Several users encountered problems with controller recognition, especially in multiplayer. Controllers either wouldn't connect, weren't recognized by the game, or only allowed keyboard input, hindering gameplay.
- Players report that Steam Remote Play, while sometimes a workaround, also suffers from significant lag and stuttering, making it an unreliable alternative for smooth gameplay.
- A positive point noted by players is the game's low PC requirements, allowing it to run smoothly on a wide range of hardware, including older or less powerful 'potato' PCs.
Recommendations:
- The game is frequently recommended for local co-op or single-player, but strongly advised against for online multiplayer due to persistent issues. Players suggest using alternative methods like Parsec for remote play.
- Many players strongly advise against purchasing the game, primarily due to significant issues with online multiplayer and general technical bugs. Some reviewers even requested refunds, indicating a high level of dissatisfaction.
- Many reviewers suggest waiting for a sale or a deep discount before purchasing the game, indicating that its current price might not be justified given the existing issues.
- Several players express a willingness to revisit or recommend the game if the developers address and fix the current technical issues, particularly those related to online multiplayer and UI bugs.
- Players discuss the use of checkpoints, with some recommending enabling them for mental health and relationship preservation, while others suggest avoiding them for a 'true' or more challenging experience.
Miscellaneous:
- Many players highlight that the game is a significant test of friendships and relationships, often leading to humorous arguments and frustration due to its challenging co-op mechanics. Success and enjoyment heavily depend on player compatibility, patience, and a shared sense of humor.
- The game's completion time varies significantly based on player skill and patience, with some finishing quickly and others taking much longer to achieve mastery.
- Some players found specific mechanics, like simultaneous jumping, difficult. There were also mentions of potential connection issues and the game being too challenging for younger children.
- Players are eager for more content, specifically requesting additional challenging maps and expressing anticipation for future developer projects, indicating satisfaction with the core gameplay.
- Despite its cute aesthetic, the game is noted for being surprisingly challenging and frustrating, creating a contrast between its appearance and actual gameplay difficulty.
