There are bears and restaurants, but this light adventure is more about story than food.
A subset of adventure games are so focused on narrative that they leave little room for actual gameplay. However, this is not always a bad thing. Sometimes there is enough player agency to be at the top of a truly compelling story. Bear’s Restaurant sits somewhere in between, with most of the action being nothing more than walking around and interacting with other characters. Luckily, it’s got an emotional story at its core, which makes for a pretty fun few hours.
Based on the title and the opening of the game, it’s safe to assume that you’re enjoying some sort of restaurant simulation experience. You, the gray cat, wake up in bed to a bear dressed as a chef. It also introduces one of Bear’s Restaurant’s key mechanics: how to obtain memory shards from people you encounter and use them to dive into their memories. Doing so will play a short cutscene revealing special foods they might have enjoyed. They all died and live in the afterlife.
To say any more about the story would do the game a disservice, but suffice it to say the plot is an eccentric mix of bitterness and weirdness. The memory shards you encounter and collect give you the ability to see how each character met their fate. permeates Bear’s Restaurant, though it may be at odds with its rudimentary presentation and its brightly pixelated colors. But the lack of meaningful gameplay means you have to be pretty immersed in the story if you want to see it through to the end. You can feel uncomfortable with the weight and the way it is woven almost unexpectedly.
Bear’s Restaurant offers an experience that is more or less unique than it seems. Its story delivers some poignant and emotional moments, but it’s also peppered with strangely dark and fantastical elements that undermine its true heart. , at least introduces the characters that carry over into its follow-up, but those looking for something more balanced and with more prominent gameplay elements will want to skip the restaurant and go right away. Maybe paradise. If you want to tell stories about life after death, how people get there, and the desire to hug those they’ve lost, pull up a chair at Bear’s Restaurant.