Game:

Bread & Fred (2023)

Duration: 7:35

96 views

3

Apparently checkpoints is also an assist feature, so checkpoints are disabled. Bread & Fred is an unforgiving co-op precision platformer that seems to take inspiration from games like Celeste and Getting Over It. Double play = I'm controlling both characters.

The main mechanic of the game is the rope which permanently ties the two players together. This means two things -players can't move too far from each other or they would drag each other around, and players can use the rope to swing. In a swing, the swinging player transfers momentum through the rope to the stationary player, allowing both players to launch off platforms.

Because the rope between players is so short, the players are forced to synchronize their movements for most of the platforming. If only one player jumps, the jump will not reach its maximum height as the height of the jump exceeds the length of the rope. Almost all jumps in this game must thus be made by both players simultaneously.

Frankly, I don't think this makes a very good co-op platformer. The swinging + momentum mechanic is interesting, but the relatively bland platforming combined with how unforgiving it is makes it unlikely that two players would have a good time playing this. There isn't much variety in the jumps. A pretty large portion of the jumps simply comprise of doing a momentum swing off a single floating platform to jump across a large gap to barely reach the next platform. And the gaps are generally designed so that you can only just barely make it. Even many regular jumps from platform to platform are set up such that a full jump from the very edge of the platform only just barely makes it.

Due to the lack of variety, the main reason to play this game would be its difficulty. Unfortunately, its difficulty stems mainly from making each jump as tight as possible so that you can just barely make it, which I believe is not really a good way to make a precision platformer challenging. Good precision platformers create difficulty from the complexity of the jumps instead. Wall grabs also can't be buffered as far as I can tell - you can't hold grab while flying into a wall to grab it, you have to press grab just as you hit the wall, which I think adds unnecessary difficulty.

A good precision platformer takes its main mechanic and applies it in creative ways to produce a large variety of jump puzzle rooms. The main mechanic (momentum swings) of this game is interesting, however playing this demo makes me question if this mechanic is flexible enough to design jumps that aren't either "swing off a floating platform to land on a far away floating platform" or "swing under a wall to stick onto another wall or land on a platform".

Also, I think they have made the platforming unnecessarily reliant on simultaneous jumps by both players. Having a simultaneous "timing" jump can be good once in a while to test players' coordination, but it gets annoying if almost every single jump (e.g. climbing steps) requires a simultaneous jump.

Coupling this with the difficulty of finding another player sufficiently interested in difficulty-focused platformers to play couch co-op with really narrows down the potential playerbase for this.

Personally though, I think aside from the generally uninteresting level design, this game makes a decent single-player precision platformer where you control two characters at once. I think there's a certain mechanical complexity to playing it this way that makes gameplay somewhat interesting.

In terms of strategy, the most difficult parts of the game are the large swings you have to do off the (four tile wide?) semisolid platforms. Most of these swings are designed so that you can just barely make it, but the destination can vary - it is either far away or high up. The ones at 1:17 and 5:53 are designed so that you cannot pull the other player up after the jump, so both players need to clear the jump.
The key to these jumps is the starting point of the stationary player. Standing further back on the platform gives you a longer horizontal distance, while standing closer to the edge gives you a higher jump. To make the jump, the stationary player uses the swinging player's momentum to run forward to the edge of the platform and jump off.
The angle of the swinging player at the point the stationary player starts running depends on how far back on the platform you started - if you are standing further back on the platform, you start running from an earlier point in the swing. Ultimately what this amounts to is memorizing the starting position and angle of the swing to start running from for each of these semisolid platforms.

The swings at 2:55 and 3:43 (which I believe are the same swing) are the hardest in the level.

Maybe I was unnecessarily harsh on this game, but these are simply my thoughts from playing the demo. The demo's free and available on steam by the way, if you wish to try it too.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1607680/Bread__Fred/

Other Statistics