Bread ‘n Butter: Memories from the Cutest Browser-Based Game Ever

Monday, July 3rd, 2017

Does anyone remember this incredibly cute game called Bread ‘n Butter?  It used to be hosted by Outspark, which doesn’t even seem to have their own landing page any more and visiting them will simply redirect you to the MMO Fiesta.

Bread ‘n Butter was a time-management simulation filled with quick minigames, all populated by some of the cutest art work of the sweetest little pastry-based characters!  The minigames are a bit like Cooking Mama or Wario Ware, where you do a quick, simple task within a fairly short time limit and then quickly move on to the next step.  The time & money management system in Bread ‘n Butter applied to the bakery/cafe that you owned, where you had to strategically place your finished baked goods around the store and have a part-time worker staffed.

It isn’t available to play any more (and the copywrite years on these screenshots don’t go higher than 2008…), and for a number of years there was like 0 information about this game on the Internet at all, and I was wondering what the heck happened to it or if anyone else even played it!  Then, Outspark created this photo album on Flickr, and I can almost immerse myself in the sweetly cute and cheerful world again with this wonderful selection of screenshots!

^ The sign-in screen!
This REALLY shows how adorable the character designs were.
Wouldn’t you, like, buy stationery and stuff with these characters on them??

I also ADORE the color palette – sweet pastels over a neutral brown & honey-yellow base!
I have a similar color scheme in one of my own game projects!

This is the “world map” screen – you actually had to travel to different locations
to gather different ingredients, such as harvesting chocolate from the woods
(where chocolate kisses grow on trees) or scooping up sweet syrup
from a volcano filled with it.

A results screen like this would show you how successful your bakery was.

An upgrade shop – I was never really able to grind enough gold
for the single gold item here, and the rest all need real currency.

There were some serious upgrades available if you could put the money towards it!

This is one of the “main” screens you would look at while playing.
The top screen shows characters working as well as shopping in your bakery,
and it’s kind of a constant that you’d keep your eye on as time passed by.
The bottom screen changes frequently, and it is where you play minigames.

Omg, look at the cute little faces on the whisk and all of those little clumps of batter!!
I remember playing this minigame with great frequency,
mashing the arrow keys like crazy lol.

Still easier than getting batter unstuck from your whisk in real life. T – T

Another minigame involving grinding flour.
In order to actually play these minigames and thus actually have supplies for your bakery,
you had to gather the raw ingredients from the forests and stuff, first.
So, it wasn’t like you could just grind through minigames,
you actually had to go out and collect the base materials, too.
There was kind of a rhythm to this game that you’d settle into,
like collect – turn into usable ingredients – bake – place in bakery.

Here is an empty bakery that needs filling!

In all of the bakery screenshots above, in the top-left corner are shown the current
part-timers available to put to work and manage your store.
You had to actually be strategic about how much some of them cost
and what strengths and weaknesses they had!

And, finally, here is the chocolate-collecting minigame in the forest. 😋
There are lots of minigames like this in other games – the one I always think of
is the fruit- or jewel-collecting minigame from Kirby 64.

Thank you for taking the time to enjoy this cute game alongside me!
I still miss it a little bit, but knowing that I have shared its cuteness
with other people is like spreading its love even long after
its lifecycle, and that’s like spreading happiness, too!

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