TikTok showed me an adorable co-op platformer called Bread & Fred

Bread and Fred is now out there on Nintendo Swap — an excellent platform for its particular model of co-op play. We’re re-publishing this story for the added console launch.

In Bread & Fred, you’re tied to a different penguin by a really brief rope, and also you’ll want some critical teamwork to make the climb. So, Ana and I (Nicole) are taking up our impressions collectively, as a crew. Consider this story because the rope tying us collectively to convey you our ideas on the sport’s chaotic platforming. We’re every writing a paragraph after which letting the opposite take over; Ana’s paragraphs will likely be in italics.

Bread & Fred was launched in Could by a three-person indie crew known as SandCastles Studio, and it has been vastly common on TikTok since. It’s a recreation that’s good for the web in the identical methods Fall Guys or Overcooked are: It requires talent, however even the worst gamers are rewarded with slapstick animations of squished penguins and hilarious falls.

I can solely take a step or two till the rope goes taught, and I’m caught in place till my accomplice makes progress on their finish. Actions like fundamental jumps to a close-by platform require a degree of coordination typically hindered by stream latency and potential lag in voice chat. My accomplice and I keep in fixed communication. All of this simply in order that we will climb just a few measly meters.

Picture: SandCastles Studio/Apogee Leisure

It’s exhausting. The platforming seems comparatively easy, however deceptively so. What seems to be merely leaping over gaps is made difficult by the brief rope. Fortunately, Bread & Fred does have a number of choices to make the sport extra approachable — one essential instance is a checkpoint system that you could activate within the choices menu. It means that you can put a flag within the floor, which acts as a spawn level should you make one disastrous fall. (We made loads of these as we began our journey up the mountain.) Bread & Fred additionally has a helpful in-game countdown timer, too, which grew to become important for exact, coordinated leaps, however we developed our personal system for areas that required one in every of us to anchor on a platform whereas the opposite swung wildly to get sufficient drive to fling each penguins to the subsequent step.

We don’t ascend the mountain in a short time, however the recreation slowly begins to click on. We transfer in sync, and ultimately, every of our penguins seems like a veritable shadow of the opposite. After dozens of tries, we make an extra-long leap that requires exact timing each on the a part of the anchor penguin and the swinging penguin. (Nobody will get to slack off on this climb!) We use these swinging physics to fling us each to a cave wall. I maintain on to the wall whereas my penguin accomplice swings to the opposite aspect. After finishing an in depth collection of inauspicious jumps, our penguins give one another a thumbs-up, and we proudly put a flag within the floor to mark our progress.

Picture: SandCastles Studio/Apogee Leisure

It’s tremendous satisfying to get to these factors and to rejoice, however Bread & Fred is sort of much more enjoyable to look at another person play — you get to luxuriate in another person’s errors. That is the place its reputation on TikTok and different social media platforms is available in; you get all the goofs and not one of the face-first falling. Folks prefer to joke in regards to the recreation ruining friendships, one thing akin to Mario Get together. That type of engagement is an enormous a part of the enjoyable of all of it, watching or taking part in, creating moments the place you possibly can poke enjoyable at your pals and rejoice your massive wins.

Bread & Fred is obtainable to play on Home windows PC by way of Steam. It’s received on-line multiplayer and distant play, in addition to a single-player mode.