Bread & Fred
is a Co-Op Multiplayer platforming puzzle game developed by Sandcastle Games and published by Apogee Entertainment that places the players in the flippers of two adorable little penguins, the eponymous Bread and Fred, as they set out to scale the mountains overlooking their village. The pair are tied together at all times, and must accordingly work in tandem to surmount the obstacles in their way, swinging, springing and clinging to walls.
While meant as a cooperative experience, the game also features a single-player mode that instead stars Greg, who sets out to tackle the challenge while tied to a rock named Jeff.
This game includes examples of:
- Ambiguous Situation: It never becomes quite clear what Maeve forgets to bring in her mountain climb with Susan. It's the reason why they no longer feel in the mood to reach the peak despite having holed up in a cave 20 meters or less below it. They even ask the players whether they've remembered to bring it but they never specify what it is.
- Anti-Frustration Features: There are several Assist Options available, including the ability to set your own Checkpoints down as you climb and have Charlie airlift you back to them whenever you like.
- Cartoon Penguin: Bread, Fred, Greg, and their peers are rendered as pixelated black penguins with white bellies and orange bills and feet. The player characters wear color-coded backpacks and scarfs.
- Chained Heat: Justified in that Bread and Fred have been roped together for safety's sake during their expedition, and are meant to be working together. Same with Greg and his rock Jeff.
- Collection Sidequest: There are various photographs scattered across the mountain that the titular duo of Cartoon Penguins is attempting to scale. Collecting these rewards the player with the pictures themselves, along with tidbits of lore recounting the history of the old penguin who lost them in the first place.
- Color-Coded Characters: Bread wears red, Fred wears green, and Greg wears yellow.
- Face Plant: Tends to be a frequent sight throughout the game, as the penguins do this whenever they fall from a far enough height. It's accompanied by a funny hitting sound.
- Flying Flightless Bird: Charlie is a flying penguin that can carry both player characters the 500 meters of mountain. There are no living species of penguin capable of flying even if all penguins retain the killed sternum required for it.
- Gusty Glade: Windy Winds is naturally filled with powerful air currents. Most of these rise and wane at regular intervals, necessitating precise timing in order to use their force to your advantage.
- Mining for Cookies: Justified. After the incident—presumably, a human-provoked, massive landslide—, a certain region of the mountain gets filled to the rim with fish that then either froze over or got superficially buried in the soil. The penguins then did a bit of engineering to be able to extract it and feed the town with it.
- No Antagonist: The game's Excuse Plot doesn't provide any antagonists or villains. All the other penguins and NPCs are quite friendly and helpful, even if Deadpan Snarkers whenever the player characters fall near them. The only opposing force is the mountain itself, making it a 'penguin vs. nature' kind of conflict.
- Rhyme Theme Naming: Seen with the protagonists of the multiplayer mode, Bread and Fred. As for the single-player mode, we have Greg and Jeff.
- Shout-Out:
- The fishing penguin in the first area may randomly start singing "Na na nana nana naaa... You know what song it is, don't you?"
- Stevie_33's gamer cave is filled with various video game references, such as a Mario cap, giant strawberry, and a mask from Hollow Knight. There are also pixelated posters plastered across the walls of games like Mirror's Edge.
- Sidequest:
- These generally take the form of picking up an item (or character) and carrying them to a specific location. Such as delivering a canvas to where a painter has set up their easel, or finding the owner of Gertrude the seal and reuniting her with her.
- One of the missions of the Fishy Mines is given by a mole whose brothers are very late for their band gig at the penguin town. Your job is to find them all and remind them of their compromise.
- There are also all the photographs you can collect. They turn out to belong to Greg's album. When his rope snapped and he fell over the precipice, the pics of his photo album get scattered all throughout the mountain.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Ice becomes a hazard once you've reached a certain height. Not only it is slightly harder to finely maneuver while running on it but the strong winds make you slide over it even if you've planted yourself down.
- Story Breadcrumbs: Various photographs are scattered throughout the mountain. Each one has notes on the back offering a bit more context for the events they capture. After collecting them all, it becomes clear that they narrate Greg's life—from his hatching, all throughout his childhood, to the moment he reaches the mountain's peak.
- Through a Face Full of Fur: The player characters are feathery penguins and will turn increasingly red from exertion the longer they hang onto a wall. This is lampshaded by the manual, which calls this 'visual stamina'.
- Wall Crawl: Downplayed; Bread and Fred can cling to walls for short periods of time, though their faces turn increasingly red the longer they hold on.
