33.0 hours played
Written 28 days ago
Bear and Breakfast has been one of my favourite games to play over the last few months. I’ve spent around 30 hours trying to complete everything, but I could have easily invested another 10 hours to perfect all my B&Bs. It was overall a game I really looked forward to playing in the evenings to relax and unwind. The game’s cartoony art style was the biggest selling point for me, I found it so deeply charming, and I adored every little item and character design. I loved dressing Hank up like a little motel owner!
In general, I really enjoyed the process of decorating the little cabins. The decoration process was straightforward, and the user interface was easy to manage. One thing I appreciated was the ability to delete a room and receive a full refund, with the items returning to my inventory, that was extremely useful! The introduction of new game mechanics occurred at a nice pace, so I never felt overwhelmed. After getting the [spoiler] pager and staff [/spoiler] , management became much easier, and it made the endgame quite satisfying.
The game is not without issues, however, especially related to pacing. Many in-game days near the end felt wasted waiting around to sleep, especially towards the end. Rarer resources were too expensive, which led to lots of downtime, and management quests like "Get X amount of 5-star reviews" added to the waiting. Collecting materials also lost their importance after a while (e.g. [spoiler] Once I hired Julia, ingredient collection became irrelevant, building materials were overly abundant in general... [/spoiler]). Moreover, after [spoiler] Barbara left [/spoiler], hotel management lost its appeal, and there was little incentive to earn more money or reviews, which was disappointing. [spoiler] Meeting the "lost god," Kai, was also underwhelming; it took only an in-game day to find him. [/spoiler] The story was delivered through scattered lore drops from characters, but I would have liked a more substantial ending and credits roll, especially since I had no management tasks left.
Overall, I wholeheartedly recommend this game if you’re interested in the gameplay loop. I found most of it very satisfying, and it was incredibly fun to decorate the various B&Bs you manage. Although the plot could be improved, it didn't deter me from enjoying the game, so I still recommend it.