Review of Bear & Breakfast Switch: some food for thought
Our Verdict
Bear & Breakfast is a delightful, laid-back management sim with heaps of personality. Despite some fumbles with pacing and controls, it’s an enchanting experience that oozes charm, and offers plenty of unique challenges to explore as you delve deeper into its world. Thanks for the wonderful stay, Hank!
Since I got a sneak peek of Bear & Breakfast last year, I've been excitedly awaiting the chance to hang out with Hank and pals. Although it was successfully released in July on other platforms, there were minor delays with the Switch version. But like all fine B&Bs, I'm delighted to report that it was well worth waiting on the backlog.
Bear & Breakfast is a really cozy and family-friendly game, with an incredibly charming graphic style that makes me think of beloved Cartoon Network series from the early 2000s. Of course, Hank is quite cute, and his dry sense of humor and basic style make him even more endearing when he moves. His traveling companions and newfound friends, such as Took the trash-loving racoon and Ipswitch the existential turkey, are just as charming.
Bear & Breakfast is mostly a relaxed, straightforward management simulation that eases you in before becoming more challenging in the latter stages of the game. You take on the role of the previously described Hank, a young bear that lives in the woods with his mother bear and a few friends. The majority of people have left the region after a slew of tragic occurrences tore through the nearby forest, leaving abandoned structures and mountains of trash (or treasures, if you ask Took) everywhere.
After deviating from their typical foraging path, Hank and his fun companions, Will the sour Poorwill and Anii the courageous but ungainly dog, hear an unexplained noise and come across a dilapidated shack. One day, they happen to run across a sketchy shark from a firm named Pawn Voyage, and it gives them an idea.
With nothing more than their youthful inventiveness and a dash of innocence, they set out to renovate the cabin and make it into a modest bed and breakfast in the hopes of making a quick profit and luring human visitors back into the woods (more people equals more treasures found in rubbish, after all). History is what's left.
In spite of its straightforward idea and easygoing gameplay, Bear & Breakfast features a very deep plot with some extremely sinister undertones. You start to discover information dropping out of the jungle as your company grows, hints of the secretive storyline beneath. I hope to see more of these intriguing storylines addressed in future updates, since many of them unfortunately go up unfinished and ignored. But the story is enhanced by a vibrant cast of characters, each as endearing as the last, and Hank's clever banter and oddball interactions with the animals and people he meets are bursting with personality.
In terms of mechanics, Bear & Breakfast is mostly about doing missions and narrative quests, gathering resources, remodeling buildings and facilities to draw in new guests, and maintaining your many B&Bs to meet the demands of your patrons. Later on in the game, you may even recruit workers and begin preparing the foretold meals; however, given that the term "breakfast" is directly in the title, this is obviously pretty late in the process.
Every site begins as an empty shell that you may fill with various room kinds and furnish using the workbench outside. Since placement is based on a grid system, putting all the necessary rooms in their proper locations in subsequent versions seems like a challenging puzzle. Every visitor has different needs, which are assigned to certain rooms via your front desk. As you advance, clients will inevitably get more picky, and generally speaking, the more picky the clientele, the more they're ready to spend for the ideal accommodation.
Hank doesn't need to sleep (though he can nap through the night if you choose to skip time), and you have relatively few time restrictions and no stamina meter. The only item I periodically ran out of was cash, but other than that, resources are plentiful and replenished every day.
It's obvious that Gummy Cat, the game's creator, prioritizes giving players a carefree, enjoyable time while hanging out with Hank above anything else. This is seen by the way the game gradually builds up to the more intricate gameplay pattern you eventually find yourself in. Although it sometimes struggles with pace as a consequence, this is a really original take to the often frenetic, high-pressure emotions associated with the management sim genre, and I personally like its relaxed environment.
The first few hours of the game seem quite plodding and linear since growth is mostly dependent on the major plot objectives; if you're hoping for a challenging management sim, this one is certainly not for you. The game begins with a repetitive pattern of accepting quests, finishing them (typically by chatting to people, obtaining a particular quantity of resources, or receiving a certain number of favorable evaluations), and then exploring the area in search of the next mission giver. Until you do so, the majority of schematics, furnishings, new locations, and blueprints are unavailable.
But with some perseverance, the training wheels fall off and the game starts to really shine. At first, I thought Bear & Breakfast would revolve on a single bed and breakfast, so I was pleasantly delighted to see Hank grow into a fluffy tycoon with a number of facilities under his management. Every bed and breakfast you open will provide different obstacles; some will come in strange designs that will make room arrangement a genuine brainteaser.
distinct settings also have distinct demands. For example, the dusty desert requires additional washing facilities, while the icy mountainside lodges need heating. You're forced to use your imagination to fit all of your visitors' desired luxuries into constrained places in order to keep the money coming in thanks to the diversity of settings.
Sadly, Bear & Breakfast still has the issue of managing sims finding a comfortable control scheme, which I find to be a common difficulty on Switch. It takes some getting accustomed to at initially, since using your joystick to switch between piloting Hank and choosing the tab you wish to see when exploring makes accessing elements like your inventory, quest log, and map difficult.
In a similar vein, you have to contend with the "Y-button to toggle" method while seeing your B&B rooms, visitors, and reviews as well as when choose between the crafting, room building, and inventory panels at the workbench. As a consequence, I often made the incorrect choice or unintentionally backed out of a selection. Since the UI seems to have been created with a PC in mind, I believe this is probably because of its multi-platform development. This isn't only a problem with Bear & Breakfast; in fact, I've had this criticism for a number of Switch games.
Bear & Breakfast performs well on the Switch and has a lovely appearance in both docked and portable modes. Apart from the character models being somewhat grainy when viewed on a big screen and the game often stuttering during auto-saves, I had no problems playing for many hours. The exquisitely styled artwork is breathtaking on the OLED Switch as well, and I often found myself pausing to take in the view.
All things considered, Bear & Breakfast is a sweet little game that defies the conventions of the management simulation genre. It's a calm, easygoing game that prioritizes character development and relaxation in the beginning before gradually increasing in complexity as you go. Similar to Hank's B&Bs, it may not be to the taste of seasoned genre veterans, but it has a lot to offer the correct listeners. I'm totally enthralled with Gummy Cat's eccentric cast of characters and unique setting, despite some pace difficulties and mishaps with the Switch controls. I can't wait to see more from Gummy Cat in the future.