The Bread Must Rise

Reviewing (mostly) every game (or DLC) in my library, part 667: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆☆☆☆☆☆ (4/10) I wonder what’s worse for an author: a player requesting a refund or a player leaving a negative review. Probably the latter, I think. Hearing why someone disliked something you wrote—and by extension, you—would probably suck way more than indifferent silence. Well, I do feel sympathy for the authors. I probably should have gotten a refund, but I wanna finish every game in the catalog, damn it! Now, while I try to remain polite as a baseline, I couldn’t help but feel a bit irked while reading [i]The Bread Must Rise (“Bread”), [/i]and thus, writing this review. I’m rereading what I wrote again, and this got a bit scathing, ngl. But I’m sorry, Beamon and Baker. I’m just a #hater. Now, I’m a hater with nuance and complexity in my heart. So, I always mention the good first. The baking itself is quite fun! I enjoyed navigating the intricate system of resource management: having to decide which ingredients to buy, balancing quality against cost, and figuring out how to approach each competition. You can focus on actually winning, investigate what is going on around you, persuade people, or sabotage y…

Firstly, I have never watched the British bake-off, so there may be references in this or just additional enjoyment if you like that show. As to this IF, it's pretty good. It's humorous without ever being laugh-out-loud funny, and the different options you have available to you for trying to win the contest are engaging and fun. The plot is silly but that's what you signed up for. There are a few quibbles I have, like early on you start getting prompts like "Spend some time investigating my parents' deaths" and I was caught off guard because I didn't give a flying ♥♥♥♥ about that - it turns out to be plot relevant, but that isn't set up well. It just says you're an orphan and I shrugged and moved on. It's a little annoying that you can never just straight up close off paths; the no-carb faction remains an option throughout and you can never just tell them to screw off and leave you alone. The ROs are kinda weak with the exception of the mistress. Overall, it's pretty good. Middle of the pack in terms of the overall CoG catalog.

Weird, but good

I'm giving this an overall "recommended", though I probably won't be finishing the game. The thing about "The Bread Must Rise" boasting about having so much text is that it feels... a little bloated? Like it could afford to trim off a good chunk of the prose in order to move things along quicker and let players make more interesting choices. Just playing the front part of the game where you put in your name, shop name and motivation felt unnecessarily draggy. The puns for what it's worth, were entertaining. There were a couple of twists in the story that were pretty fun to read as well, particularly the part where you have to run around town with an animated body of a murder victim whose body mysteriously appeared in your shop, trying your best not to give away the fact that the victim is dead since you don't want to be incriminated as a murder suspect. Overall it was a fun read while it lasted, but I keep losing motivation to come back to it because the plot moves at a snail's pace.

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