Bear and Breakfast is a game I’ve had my eye on for quite some time. When I saw the first trailer, I instantly connected with its visual style and gameplay. The mix of Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley was a big draw as I’m a huge fan of both. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to. When I finally got to play Bear and Breakfast, I was overjoyed. Not only is this a great game, it’s one of the best management sims out there in years. In short, this is the game you should download now.
In Bear and Breakfast you play as Hank the bear. Hank and his friends built the first bed and breakfast in the woods through a run-in with a robotic shark. Your job is to continue managing this facility, upgrading everything and unlocking even more bed and breakfast locations. Luckily, in July he jumped in when the PC version first launched and logged in for over 60 hours. His Switch release was one of my most anticipated Switch releases for quite some time. please do not worry. I’ll do my best to avoid any more bear puns (although I can guarantee the game doesn’t make the same promise).
The first big thing about Bear and Breakfast is its style. Visually, everything in the game is adorable. From the way the characters are animated and move around, to the overall feel of the game, Bear and Breakfast can be part of your Saturday morning cartoon. Then there’s the top-notch humor. It never gets too serious, is full of fun puns and, of course, jokes. Bears and breakfast are cold. No timer. Nothing remotely stressful. Building furniture and rooms for your bed and breakfast and doing it at your leisure is a relaxing experience.
Gameplay is another standout feature for me. The game doesn’t directly tell you what you have to do to make your bed and breakfast better. Nor will we punish you for your decisions. Today he might want to spend the day gathering resources in the forest instead of managing individual rooms. Bear and Breakfast is perfectly OK with this, offering a perfectly soothing experience. But its strength lies in its management gameplay.
At first, the system looks very basic. A room is made and furnished, every night, or he can choose a guest to stay for two nights. More locations can be unlocked over time. This means more guests coming in. The more guests you have, the more guests need your place to get great reviews and rewards. This unlocks what you can do at each location. Your first bed and breakfast may have been simply putting people to sleep in comfy beds, but since then it’s been cooking meals, heating the entire building, providing exquisite hygiene options, building a bar, playing games. The construction of the museum should start. Such. There are quite a few that will be added as we progress. This gives you more control over all locations.
In addition, you have the opportunity to “repair” the forest in which you live. I don’t want to spoil any part of the story, but let’s just say that a traumatic event happened. It’s up to you to restore the forest to its former glory. Your tasks can range from simple like clearing debris to more complex like repairing a diner or rebuilding a bridge. The fact that Bear and Breakfast doesn’t force him to one style of gameplay is something I really appreciate. I spent several hours roaming the woods fixing things that had nothing to do with my bed and breakfast. The game rewards me for doing so.
The reward system is another aspect that I appreciate. Every time someone stays at the bed and breakfast, she gets two rewards: reviews and money. Reviews help attract more guests, and the higher the reviews, the more expensive clients are willing to stay. You can get money from guests and use it to buy new blueprints for furniture and food, or buy random items in the shop. Bear and Breakfast also greatly increases your rewards, giving you a real incentive to do more than your guests ask for. Let’s say you have a guest who wants a room with a certain level of comfort and decor. Having a room that is more comfortable and decorated than they had planned will make guests pay more to stay there. while encouraging you to think about which guests you want your bed and breakfast to accommodate.
There is also a lot of content on offer. As well as unlocking numerous bed and breakfast locations, there are multiple forest locations to explore. This can range from lighthouse/beach locations to snowy winter mountains to dark and mysterious forests. There is so much to explore, and each location has distinct attributes you won’t find anywhere else. The Mysterious Forest has certain flowers that must be collected to unlock certain quests. A snowy mountain can be the place to build a greenhouse, the only way to grow certain fruits that are essential to the success of your bed and breakfast.
In addition, there is also the cooking aspect of the game as a whole. At some point, you can learn how to cook meals and master more meals by unlocking or purchasing recipes. This is important. Because your guests will need more premium food from you soon, so a plate of sliced apples just isn’t enough. Because they’re complicated foods that even I don’t know how to make in real life. This is another aspect of Bear and Breakfast that adds great control and fun to the experience. So don’t worry, your job isn’t just to put a bed and a wardrobe in the room and let it go.
So what about the Nintendo Switch version? Well, I’m happy to say that the Switch version is great. I have one minor problem. First, the game looks and runs great on the Nintendo Switch. Having played this game on PC before, I was very excited to try it out in handheld mode on Switch and it turned out to be my favorite way to play. I didn’t experience any performance issues (this was also the PC version), except that the game freezes for half a second when it autosaves each night. Not a big deal by any means, but it’s there. The only minor issue worth highlighting is the switch control scheme. Manipulating characters and collecting resources is very easy. Inventory management and building management become a little more complicated. This is very common in PC games coming to Switch, as the Switch controller has fewer buttons, increasing the need to map things to the same button. This isn’t a game-breaking issue, but one that takes a little while to figure out.After about 2-3 hours, I finally got used to the control scheme. So be aware that there will be a bit of a learning curve on how to navigate the game if you get the Switch release.
Despite that issue, Bear and Breakfast stands out as one of my favorite games of the year. Its visual style is immediately appealing, and its gameplay feels almost flawless. It’s Chill’s game of wanting people to relax while micromanaging their own bed and breakfast areas. The game has a great reward system, with lots of things you can unlock to keep you playing for hours. Despite the controls that take some practice to get used to, the Nintendo Switch games are very well done. Bear and Breakfast hangs out on the platform next to his Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, and more. Bear and Breakfast was so good that it jumped to the top of my list of games of the year. Please buy this game. An absolutely amazing title that you must play to have a good time like a bear (sorry, I couldn’t stand it). As Hank says, “Approval of bear cries”
