Bear and Breakfast

To open, the 1.1.1 update is now out. A good few earlier reviews you may have seen had very legitimate complaints about some balancing issues and bugs in the launch version. Nothing gamebreaking, but in the way enough to note. Now that the update is here the game flows much smoother. Bear and Breakfast is a quest-driven hotel management game with a cozy cartoon aesthetic. The game is actually fairly linear in it's execution as the questlines push you forward to each new area of the map and unlock new features. Each new area offers different aesthetics, designs, and difficulties. That isn't to say there's a lack of open expression though. You can decorate however you want. If you want to be utilitarian about it and just use the highest value items in unrealistic locations to min-max then go ahead. If you'd rather decorate around aesthetics and keep things sensible then you absolutely can. The game prioritizes decoration and room upgrades, so make sure you're someone who takes pleasure in decoration as its own objective (though you get plenty of direct benefits). The character writing is very endearing and makes you look forward to each time you return to someone later in the story. The art is very pretty and the music is also pretty solid.

This review has spoilers! The good -A very endearing and cute art style, it's easy to tell the artists working on this game really enjoyed it -A colorful array of side characters to interact with, though often only briefly -An excellent soundtrack -A generally cozy vibe with some stellar locations to build your B&Bs in The Bad - The story is vague and somewhat nonsensical, ending on a flat note that leaves you scratching your head, who knew that freeing a literal god from imprisonment could be so anticlimactic -For what's supposed to be a cozy game Barbara's betrayal comes out of left field and totally ruins the positive vibe of the game, all that work so she could go on a cruise at our expense? Really? -I can't help but feel as though there are some dropped plot points, such as Barbara's captain friend, Hank's father, and whatever's going on with all those animal monuments you find -To be polite, the dialogue is self indulgent and cheesy to an obnoxious degree, filled to the brim with jokes that I can only assume sounded funnier in the writer's head, to be impolite, it's cringe The Ugly -Not long after reaching Highlake the game starts tacking on additional gameplay systems that add a bunch of tedium that wasn't there before, first it's cooking which means you now need to scavenge for ingredients in addition to upgrading your cooking appliances, then there's the heating system which means making and upgrading heaters and constantly making sure they're topped up with fuel, until finally you get to Pinewood and now you need food, heaters, and literally every other type of room that the game had previously, it goes from being fun to build and deck out your B&B to feeling more like work -Just use the staff!, you might say. By the endgame and with minimal staff they were taking up about half my income every night. That's simply too much and I'm sure if I automated everything I would be in the negatives. - The last several quests are padding, simple as that.

I'm pretty close to finishing the game at this point, and I think I've finished the story. I expected the hotel management, and it is absolutely perfect! You can tell that the makers put their heart and soul into this game. If I could give it 4.9 out of 5 I would, just because the story is really great but ended kind of abruptly. It felt like there was a little buildup, and then it just ended. Maybe I haven't gotten to the true end yet, I'm not sure. If you're addicted to Stardew Valley like me, I think you'll get addicted to this game.

I waited for this game for so long, and I was so excited to play it. The game is about a bear managing a hotel. In the most spoiler-free way, that's it. You can add rooms and objects to satisfy your clients and create a cozy hotel. If you expect the game to be similar to Stardew Valley, it's not. You can cook and craft furnishings, not to mention meet new friends along the way. It's a linear story that gives you the freedom to run your hotel the way that can please you. The game keeps the tutorial a click away from you, but it's easy to learn the mechanics as you play it. (Creating your route, planning what to do next, identifying what you need and where you can get it.) The only thing I wish for is a better way to find what you need while crafting or cooking, but that doesn't affect your gameplay at all. The music is incredibly pleasant, making you want to listen to it for hours. The art is adorable. It made me laugh whenever the characters had a different expression during the conversations. (kudos to the dialogue too!) The game got a patch fixing the known bugs, and the devs are clearly working hard to make the game a smooth experience for the players. Kudos to them (and the community in general), as they answered my questions and updated the game so quickly. If you enjoy management and a chill game where there's no rush to finish a task, you should play Bear and Breakfast.