Side Quests // 03.03.2023
FAMILY GAME NIGHT EDITION
Hey again folks,
This issue, we’ve got two recommendations well-suited for spending some quality time with kith and/or kin. Grab a partner for the first one, or your entire friend group for the second, and set aside some time for some low-stakes goofy fun.
Bread & Fred
What if, in the Werner Herzog Nihilist Penguin sequence, there were not one, but two penguins headed towards a mountain in the distance? And what if those penguins were bound by a rope and trained to climb said mountain as a duo? And what if it was extremely cute?
Well, then you’d have Bread & Fred, an adorable coop platformer available now as a demo on Steam. My wife and I played through a bit of the demo, and it was a blast; we’re also making our way through It Takes Two at the moment, and Bread & Fred was very much in the same vein.
That said, Bread & Fred brings something new to the table in its partner-platforming mechanics. When playing It Takes Two, the roles between the two characters, while complementary, are ultimately distinct. In Bread & Fred, you and your partner are literally attached at the hip - there’s no splitting up and no acting without directly affecting the other person.
You’ll have to learn to function as one character and leverage your shared tether to swing between platforms, fling yourselves across gaps, and pull one another up from near-death falls. Even simple jumps require coordination, lest one person accidentally pull the other off-target.
For duos with a bit of a skill (or patience) gap, it’s also got some assistance tools like manual checkpoints to ease more challenging segments. It’s overall a great concept, and a masterclass in how a simple but ingenious concept can form a great backbone for a game.
P.S. There is also a single-player mode, featuring a poor penguin tied to a rock - that’s certainly an option, but we highly recommend playing with a buddy.
Gartic Phone
You will laugh. I’m talking pee-your-pants, can’t breath, tears-in-your-eyes, stomach hurts laugh at the ridiculous, often cursed images Gartic Phone will extract from you and your loved ones.
The premise is a blend of Telephone and Pictionary; at the beginning of the game, each player in the lobby of up to 14 will write a single prompt. Something like, “Baptizing your iguana to save his soul“ or “Underwater dim-sum“. Then, each player is assigned another’s prompt, and must draw it.
Gartic Phone is a browser game, which makes it both free and extremely accessible — but the “drawing“ tools are about as complex as MS paint, and with players using computer mice to draw, the pictures are often very melted.
It doesn’t end there, though; those drawings now make the rounds, with players trying to guess what the initial prompt was. Those guesses then go out to be drawn, and the cycle continues once or twice more, until there are a few “generations“ of the prompt→drawing cycle.
Sometimes a prompt will survive the translations — but it’s often better when they don’t, becoming mutated somewhere down the line to absurd and hilarious effect. If you pick a good group, it’s a guaranteed great time.
That’s all for this issue, folks! We’ll catch back up with you later this month.
As always, thanks for reading, and give us a sub if you appreciate the recommendations!