Bear and Breakfast Review Ladies Gamers

Bear and Breakfast Review

Game: Bear and Breakfast
Genre: Management Simulation, Adventure
System: Steam (Windows)
Developer | Publisher: Gummy Cat
Age Rating: US E 10+ | EU 3+
Price: US $19.99 | UK £15.49 | EU € 16,79
Release Date: July 28th, 2022

Review code not used; I purchased the game myself.

Bear and Breakfast is a hotel management simulation adventure game by developer Gummy Cat. This wacky game gives players the opportunity to start their own line of rustic getaways in the woods while they play as a bear named Hank.

The Gameplay of Bear and Breakfast

Gameplay in Bear and Breakfast is typical of many interactive management sims; players move through the world, collecting materials, foods, and quest items in order to create bigger and better items to improve their hotels. There are also five levels of decorative items and furniture that Hank can build in order to improve the comfort score, decoration score, hygiene scores, temperature, and/or food levels of their different properties.

The first of these properties that Hank will be able to fix up is the Shack in the Woods; this building only requires the “bear” minimum of items; it can contain no kitchens, bathrooms, or special builds. The last level of buildings allows for all sorts of extras from heating rooms to movie cinemas to museums.

Bear and Breakfast Review Ladies Gamers
Hank is a handsome bear boy that can wear people clothing!

There is a fairly good fast travel system that allows Hank to travel between different bus stops, each in the most important parts of the map. There are also unlockable trinkets that make playing significantly easier; things like the notebook that allows for quest tracking, the clock that tells players what time it is, and even the trail mix that increases Hank’s walking speed by 50%.

The Feel of Playing Bear and Breakfast

This game is incredibly chill; there aren’t a whole lot of negative things that can happen to players for messing up and making a visitor unhappy. You just try again the next day to be better, and you might have a single not-so-good review on your building.

Overall, this game is play-at-your-own-pace. You can focus on one building at a time, or you can dive into all the different areas and overwhelm yourself as much as you want.

Bear and Breakfast Review Ladies Gamers
Good advice from a good game!

There are plenty of main storyline quests to fill about 10-12 hours of gameplay, and for those who want to complete the whole thing and are kind of perfectionists like me, up to about 40 hours.

Bear and Breakfast’s Less Stellar Bits

I love this game. It’s deeply weird and funny with things that are 100% my sense of humor. The animals are adorable, the NPC humans are fun, and the story is interesting and compelling. However, there are a few downsides to Bear and Breakfast.

Bear and Breakfast Review Ladies Gamers
Hank is naturally nervous, which leads to some amazing facial expressions.

A few Issues

Of the issues I have with this hotel-management simulation game, I think my biggest is with the ending. It’s so abrupt and weird that there are tons of people on the Steam Community pages asking if they have finished the game or not. Something as simple as a “Congrats You Did It!” screen would have completely eliminated this weird feeling of hanging after the final story quest is complete.

There were also a couple of other small things that I very strongly disliked about this game, and since they were mostly tiny, I will just list them off:

  • Heating buildings in this game is annoying. Even after upgrading your heaters. Even with an NPC to help you out. The heating units just use too much fuel.
  • There are some moments that feel really slow in this game. It would be useful if Hank could sleep whenever to speed through days where you are waiting on something, but you can’t sleep until 9PM (it was midnight when I first started playing!).
  • One of the storylines with one of the characters feels unfinished or disappointing somehow. It’s not easy to say why without a ton of spoilers, but I felt like I had missed something when I had finished up her quest chain.
  • There are shortages of some items out in the wild for no apparent reason. An example was iron nails before the devs added more drops of these, and I hope they continue to add more drops all over for the high-end materials that players need a lot of.
Bear and Breakfast Review Ladies Gamers
Some NPCs in Bear and Breakfast don’t speak bear, so you have to do what you can to communicate.

Conclusion

I love this game deeply. It’s funny, it’s charming, it’s relaxing, it’s fun. It’s a little slow at times, but not terribly so. I’ve had a ton of fun in my two playthroughs of this game and am not quite done with this one just yet. I look forward to yet another attempt at a perfect run in the near future.

Overall, Bear and Breakfast could be a little better, but it’s a wonderful experience.

Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot. 
I like it a lot

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *