A Day in the Life of a Slice of Bread (SuNoFes 2015)

[sasquatchii]

About

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live life as a sentient slice of bread? Now’s your chance to find out.
​This is an extremely serious game, I recommend going to the closest convenience store and buying a box of tissues. Its emotional level will definitely be pulling a few heart strings. You’ve been warned.

This game​ was created for SuNoFes 2015. This was my first game jam and it was truly an amazing experience, especially connecting with other devs, artists, and writers over twitter and being in the same boat as everyone else. Special thanks to those guys for inspiring me & sending kind words & thoughts my way!! You can see the rest of the SuNoFes games here.

Statistics

The game contains 97 dialogue blocks, containing 1,508 words and 8,981
characters, for an average of 15.5 words and 93 characters per block. The game contains 12 menus, 63 images, and 29 screens.​

Questions

1. Did the game make you laugh or smile?
2. What did you think about the voice acting?
3. Did you play more than once? If yes, how many times?​
4. What were your first impressions on the art style?
5. Was anything in the story confusing or weird?
6. What ending(s) did you get? How did the ending(s) make you feel?
7. Did you see any buggy/technical things that were off or broken that should be fixed?
8. Do you have any other critique/feedback/suggestions for me?

Thanks so much for checking this game out, and thanks for playing!! Hope you guys enjoy

[sorani]

1. Did the game make you laugh or smile?
Everything was pretty cute, the endings were pretty funny too.

2. What did you think about the voice acting?
I liked the British voice, but imo the tone was always kept at a steady monotonish tone, so it kinda dragged on a bittt.
But I thought it was a really nice touch!

3. Did you play more than once? If yes, how many times?​
Played it until there was nothing else to click. Yep.

4. What were you first impressions on the art style?
I LOVE THE STYLE. It was like a childrens picture book, except on the computer. I really loved the GUI and the fact that there was no text box made the VN more cinematic than regular ADV

5. What anything in the story confusing or weird?
Nothing, haha I kinda knew that it had a nonsensical plot, so I didn't even bother to question that

self cannibalism

.

6. Did you see any buggy/technical things that were off or broken that should be fixed?
Hmm, I didn't really pay attention, but the sounds and music were pretty loud as default. The sounds were pretty jarring, it kinda scared me. Maybe that was the purpose of it hahaha.

7. Do you have any other critique/feedback/suggestions for me?
It was pretty short, but in a way, this VN kinda fits best as short game. That's about it!

Thanks for making this and congrats on the release~
I definitely would love to see more of these from you, it's very unique and one of a kind1

[GreyWolfXx]

1. Did the game make you laugh or smile?
Yes I laughed and smiled a lot.

2. What did you think about the voice acting?
I like the voice acting, I think it added a humorous touch. It was actually some very good voice acting.
3. Did you replay? If so, then how many times?
I played every end ^_^. It was so funny.
4. What were your first impressions on the art style?
The art style was enjoyable, minimalist, but great. Cutesy.
5. Was anything in the story confusing or weird?
Nope. Nothing confusing or weird.
6. What ending(s) did you get? How did the ending(s) make you feel?
I got all of them, and most of them were just humorous.

Burning in a toaster wasn't sad

7. Did you see any buggy/technical things that were off or broken that should be fixed?
I didn't notice anything.
Do you have any more critique/feedback/suggestions for me
No, not really. Although I really liked the art! All in all I enjoyed it. A very funny, short game.

[paradigmshifty]

1. Did the game make you laugh or smile?
I smiled a lot and laughed once too!

2. What did you think about the voice acting?
It was a nice touch. I think it works well with the length of the game.
The inflections sometimes make some things sound like questions, but that didn't impact my enjoyment.

3. Did you play more than once? If yes, how many times?​
Oh about 10 times now!

4. What were your first impressions on the art style?
Art style is great, very professional finish. Again, works well with the short game length. GUI and Icon are so clean and pretty, which I already expected hehe.
Some amazing backgrounds also, the clouds, trees, shadows, etc. are great - with very little information they convey a lot of feeling.

5. Was anything in the story confusing or weird?

Was the Texas reference because I went 'Right'? Why do the skaters call me Mario?
I don't know if those couple of things are cultural references I'm missing!
Also, I had to go back and re-read when asked "Are you going to go through with this idea?" So I found those few lines a little confusing at first. I think the idea being suggested by the narrator was what threw me there. I got it after re-reading though.

6. What ending(s) did you get? How did the ending(s) make you feel?
Most of them were funny.

I liked the mix of good and bad endings and the couple I found in which I destroy the planet/universe made me smile.

7. Did you see any buggy/technical things that were off or broken that should be fixed?
I did reach for the menu when the first louder piece of music came in as it was drowning out the voice acting, I turned the music down to about 70%.
Also there is a little pop at the end of the splash wav. The scream is a bit loud too.

8. Do you have any other critique/feedback/suggestions for me?
Very polished and a lot of fun! I'm looking forward to whatever you make next!

[neuropsy]

1. Did the game make you laugh or smile?

Smile? Laugh? No, I was heartbroken seeing the plight of the poor, sentient slice of bread. Seeing him struggle for freedom, only to succumb to the pits of the toaster in some endings, or get crushed by the one who'd have been his best friend had he not awoken them...I could only shed bitter tears. Even in the "good" endings, as much as I wished to cling onto hope and happiness, the fact remains--he is alone, the only sentient piece of bread in the universe who must experience existential crisis after existential crisis through his facade as a successful member of society. You ought to add "Tragedy" as a tag to this game, truly.

...But, yes, I was grinning and chuckling the whole time at the absurdity of it all.

2. What did you think about the voice acting?
Top notch. Beautiful. It truly was a shining point of the game, along with the self-aware narrative.

3. Did you play more than once? If yes, how many times?​
I forgot how many times I played it. I did, however, try to get all the endings.

4. What were your first impressions on the art style?
"This looks really cute."

5. Was anything in the story confusing or weird?
Are you asking me if I thought something in a story about a sentient loaf of bread was confusing or weird?

6. What ending(s) did you get? How did the ending(s) make you feel?
I think I got all, if not most of them? See my first comment to see how they made me feel. *sobs profusely*

7. Did you see any buggy/technical things that were off or broken that should be fixed?
Nope. Everything worked seamlessly.

8. Do you have any other critique/feedback/suggestions for me?
I have one: please make more games. xD

[Laniessa]

1. Did the game make you laugh or smile?
Yes. A lot. The toast grew a face and I just couldn't stop smiling after that.

2. What did you think about the voice acting?
It was really nice, but if I'm to be honest, I tend to read things quite quickly so the pace of the voice was a bit slow, at least for me. The scream was really jarring, too.

But I still loved it and I really appreciate the voice acting!

3. Did you play more than once? If yes, how many times?​
Yup! I don't remember, but enough times to get all endings.

4. What were your first impressions on the art style?
I LOVE IT. Then I clicked around in the menu and had a moment of WOW THIS IS SO PRETTY. It was so great, I really really loved the art!

5. Was anything in the story confusing or weird?
The... texas-Mario joke? I don't know. Other than that, not really!

6. What ending(s) did you get? How did the ending(s) make you feel?
All of them, I think. They all made me laugh, but the crying ending was the best.

7. Did you see any buggy/technical things that were off or broken that should be fixed?
Not especially, but the voice was quiet in relation to the other sound - I think it might be better to have the default volumes set so that it's all good when relative to each other?

8. Do you have any other critique/feedback/suggestions for me?
"You can't bare it!" - is a line, and I think the word is 'bear' instead?

Oh, and you should put your name down in the credits screen that you can access from the menu c:

I really loved it a lot, congratulations on your release!

[ebi-hime]

Aw, this game was super cute!
I really love the style of the art, and how clean it all looks - and the bight colours, too! And I really like how there's so much of it. And the small bits of animation were a really nice touch hehe : >
The menus look really slick and pro, too. You did a great job designing them!

I liked the voice acting, it gave the story a nice touch - I think the narrator had quite a comedic voice that was suited for this story. The music sometimes drowned him out though, so I had to slide the music quite low to hear him properly.

This VN made me smile a lot, it was really polished & clear a lot of effort went into it, despite being so short. But reading short VNs is also nice, since I've been trying to plough through the monster that is F/SN lately and I like taking breaks : >

And, like the above commenter mentioned, I think 'bare it' should be 'bear it'? But that's the only error I found - apart from the volume thing, which can be fixed easily by messing with the sound sliders anyway.

This was all so cute, I-I'll never look at a piece of bread in the same way again, haha n_n;

[Steamgirl]

1. Did the game make you laugh or smile?
Yes! It was silly and took some unexpected turns. The voice acting was great, very amusing.

The ending where I ended up married to a human made me laugh.

2. What did you think about the voice acting?
Like I said above, it was very well suited. Great acting, very amusing.

3. Did you play more than once? If yes, how many times?​
Yes, 4 times.

4. What were your first impressions on the art style?
Gorgeous. Slick. Cute. I love the choice of colours.

5. Was anything in the story confusing or weird?
Well nothing confusing - but it was definitely weird. All of it. I mean, it's about a slice of bread after all!
Actually, come to think of it, when it asked me whether I should go through with this idea, I thought it was referring to the original idea of crying, not the suggestion to stop, so the two prompts afterwards were a bit weird to me. (No, how can I cry if I can just stop - You know what, I think I will continue crying regardless). Easy to clarify that one though.

6. What ending(s) did you get? How did the ending(s) make you feel?

The one where you get married, one where you get squashed by a bowling ball (shock!), the toasted ending, and the soggy ending.

They were amusing although one of them was a bit shocking because it was so unexpected!

7. Did you see any buggy/technical things that were off or broken that should be fixed?
Oh actually I did get a little bug in the main menu when I pressed quit I somehow managed to also select the options menu at the same time, so it was overlaid by the yes/no prompt. But I haven't been able to reproduce that one.

8. Do you have any other critique/feedback/suggestions for me?
I had a great time! It was a fun diversion! I'd love to see you make more like this, and also more serious creations if you have any inclination in that direction.

[Haze]

So, Norbez and I played Sasquatchii's game as part of Two Twins Talk, where we critque VNs and other narrative-focused title with the goal of helping devs grow. Sasquatchii's already seen the video, but I wanted to post it here, as well.

We had a lot of fun with the game, but felt it could have been a bit better in certain areas. We tell all the details in the video.

[Godline]

1. Did the game make you laugh or smile?
This was pretty much the best thing since sliced bread. (I had to!)

2. What did you think about the voice acting?
BWHAHAHAHA! Perfect. It made it sound like it was a documentary, but not. Too good.

3. Did you play more than once? If yes, how many times?​
I played until I got all the endings. I was very satisfied.

4. What were your first impressions on the art style?
I always love your art style. It's unique and neat.

5. Was anything in the story confusing or weird?
It was all confusing and weird. Just kidding. It was perfect in every way. I just wish there were more bready adventures to go on!

6. What ending(s) did you get? How did the ending(s) make you feel?
I clearly felt emotionally distraught for the bread. I got all of them. (Just can't be bothered with spoiler tags to talk about them all).

7. Did you see any buggy/technical things that were off or broken that should be fixed?
Nope.

8. Do you have any other critique/feedback/suggestions for me?
MORE! Nah, it's good to see you doing more stuff, so I'm satisfied. Are you still doing your doggy game (Lost and Found? Wasn't that the name?)?

[Laiska]

That was super cute!! And super fun.

1. Did the game make you laugh or smile?
I was smiling the whole time, and I got a few good laughs out of it. The voice actor was brilliant in their delivery, and I enjoyed the musical cues, and the general absurdity of the whole thing.

2. What did you think about the voice acting?
It was wonderful! If a little too quiet at times.

3. Did you play more than once? If yes, how many times?​
I went through every branch!

4. What were your first impressions on the art style?
I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's very clean and sharp. It has a charming picture book feel, while still looking modern and fresh.

5. Was anything in the story confusing or weird?
Not particularly.

6. What ending(s) did you get? How did the ending(s) make you feel?
All of them, I think. I was amused by each one of them.

7. Did you see any buggy/technical things that were off or broken that should be fixed?
One time the game loaded the wrong save for me, but I couldn't replicate it.

8. Do you have any other critique/feedback/suggestions for me?
I'm looking forward to seeing more from you. You have a great sense of overall presentation. Keep it up!

[Alera]

Just finished playing this, I don't know if I got all the endings, but here's my impressions:

1. Did the game make you laugh or smile?
- It made me...have a confused expression? Because it wasn't at all what I expected-haha. I just couldn't help but think what people's sudden fascination with bread was, I mean, look at I Am Bread and now this... XD
2. What did you think about the voice acting?
- I thought it was pretty good and suited the style of the game!
3. Did you play more than once? If yes, how many times?​
- I played like...nearly 10 times?? I tried to get as many endings as I could.
4. What were your first impressions on the art style?
- It was cute! Very clean and nice. Sad that I didn't get to have a face for all the playthroughs.
5. Was anything in the story confusing or weird?
- The story was weird in itself, but if we leave that aside, I thought it was good? It was tasteful humour, if that makes sense.
6. What ending(s) did you get? How did the ending(s) make you feel?
- I got quite a few.

In the first one, I flooded the world-lol. Then I ended up in a toaster. Then ate myself and caused a paradox. Then got hit by a bowling ball. I got stepped on. I had a happy life with the human. And I had a little house and 'ate' fish. I can't remember if i missed any??

7. Did you see any buggy/technical things that were off or broken that should be fixed?
- Nope.
8. Do you have any other critique/feedback/suggestions for me?
- Very well done! It was an unusual but quite entertaining and interesting little game. Very neat art stile, the GUI was quite cool, I really liked it. The voice acting was a nice surprise! I look forward to your future projects~ >v</

[KuroOneHalf]

Yo Sasquatchii. Finally got around to playing this. First off, the questionaire:
1. Did the game make you laugh or smile?
The storytelling not so much, but the visuals did. The bread face is adorable.
2. What did you think about the voice acting?
Was fine, but it suffers a little from an emphasis problem. Ever since I saw the video where Ira Glass talks about amateur voice actors and reporters underlining every third word or so, I find that I spot it very easily now.
3. Did you play more than once? If yes, how many times?​
Enough to see everything.
4. What were your first impressions on the art style?
It's nice! I guess it's expected, but the UI/design is cohesive and slick (and cute).
5. Was anything in the story confusing or weird? & 6. What ending(s) did you get? How did the ending(s) make you feel?
All of them. No particular feelings, though I guess it's mostly because of the role-playing thing. The bread either doesn't have personality or acts in very strange ways. The disparity between choice prompts and what happens in the actual branches is also strange and follows a mostly random approach, which I find hard to care for as a reader. Also might be me but I find "go left/right" options to be incredibly uninteresting, as they do absolutely nothing to influence your decision-making and are essentially a coin toss.
7. & 8. Do you have any other critique/feedback/suggestions for me?
Alright, the second part, here we go:
- Please for the love of goodness convert your audio files to ogg. Out of the entire game which is 165MB, 137 MB is just audio files. That is crazy. There's even a 72 MB Flac, aaaaaaaahh!! /o\
Get Audacity, open up each track individually on it, and then save as .ogg. Try this out and then gasp at the size reduction. This is industry standard for a good reason.
- Your bird ambience track is 6m37s long, which is several times longer than it needs to be. You shouldn't need more than a one or two minute looped ambience track to get a totally natural background atmosphere. You can also use Audacity to loop tracks.
- The first audio track that plays in the game, when you're revealed to be a piece of bread, is much too loud. Even putting the narrator volume 15% louder than the BGM volume, it's still kinda muffled by the music. I'd suggest in cases like this you artificially lower the volume of a track (once again Audacity can do this. Or you can put it in a separate renpy audio channel and reduce the volume of that).
- I am not sure if you grabbed existing tracks or had someone custom make them, but if its the latter you should have asked for a perfect looped files. Unlooped files are very jarring when looped and just give an air of laziness, in my opinion. The aforementioned track suffers from this.
- Change the default text speed to not be 100%/instant. I assume since you give the option that it wasn't intended to be instant. Personal preference but I enjoy default text speed to be at around 85% or so. It gives me enough time to see the animation, but it's not so slow that I feel like I'm waiting for text to scroll.
- Allow players to back out of menus with the standard visual novel command for that - the right click. You can achieve this with a "key "game_menu" action Return()" line inside screens code.
- "Screw this man, I'm going back inside." What did the man do? And who is this man the bread is talking about? Punctuation please. >:)
- "[...] even equally swanky [...]" ?
- From what I can tell there is absolutely no difference (aside from he/she/they) between assuming that the hotdog cart person is a guy or a girl, or just not deciding (in which case there is an extra scream, but otherwise the same). Did I miss something or is this indeed the case? If so, why? It's so pointless to have this branch cloned three times.
- 3 save slots per screen, especially for how often you're prompted with choices, is a bit too little. I'd say you should contain at least 5 per page. It's just a hassle to have to hop through the pages when working back through saves.
- It's not a problem for people who have played proper visuals novels before and are used to expecting it, but for people who don't know, not having any visual indicator (or instruction) telling you that there's a way to access the menus from in-game is a problem. I believe one playthrough video I saw of it the person didn't even realize it existed. I get that this makes the UI cleaner, but it's still not a good solution.
- How come you're not in the credits screen? :p And yet random people from SFX are. Should be the other way around, no?

Hope that didn't sound too harsh! Congratulations and good job on finishing your first VN. With all the feedback you've gotten, I'll be expecting the second game to be a few notches better. :p

[chocojax]

Late congrats on the release! \o/

1. Did the game make you laugh or smile?
Yeah! It was a really cute/silly game. (The VA screaming was especially silly.)

2. What did you think about the voice acting?
It was really good!

3. Did you play more than once? If yes, how many times?​
I did, but I'm not sure how many. Maybe a dozen times? I was trying to get all endings.

4. What were your first impressions on the art style?
That it was adorable/cute! (Not a first impression, but I thought the art style fit the game.)

5. Was anything in the story confusing or weird?
The story itself was weird, but nothing was confusing.

6. What ending(s) did you get? How did the ending(s) make you feel?

All of them, I think? Toaster death, black hole, fishing, romance, bowling ball, and stepped on. I suppose I felt pretty happy at the good ones ofc (The fishing one made me smile).

7. Did you see any buggy/technical things that were off or broken that should be fixed?
I did notice that for one line, the VA said "word vomit" strangely. I didn't go back to re-listen, though.

8. Do you have any other critique/feedback/suggestions for me?
Not that I can think of. The simple GUI/art style tied in very well with the story, same with the music (I especially liked the main menu bgm).
My only critique could probably be that it was a really short game! I wish the good end paths were slightly longer!