| 5 star: | | (0) | | 4 star: | | (1) | | 3 star: | | (6) | | 2 star: | | (8) | | 1 star: | | (0) |
| Average Rating: 
Number of Ratings: 15
Write a review |
1-15 of 151 of
1 people found the following review helpful:
"Simple" isn't always easy to deliver., December 10, 2023Brave Bear is a child’s toy with a solemn duty to keep its owner safe. I liked the concept, I enjoyed playing with toys, and I liked the goal of bringing friends together to protect someone that they cared about. I just wish that some of the clues were easier to understand.
As a toy, the bear has a simple view of the world. As people who quote Steve Jobs will tell you, “simple” is difficult to implement. Brave Bear’s narrative voice describes an ordinary family home from a new perspective that felt unnecessarily limiting and confusing in a few places.
Some of this entry’s other design choices were unexpected — two toys have abilities that are hinted at but never used in the game, and a few of the locations have exhaustive lists of exits that are never used. They might have been red herrings, but that seems out of place in a story where the puzzles are so simple.
The experience reminded me of Samurai Lapin, which was an animated flash movie on the internet from (checks notes) more than 20 years ago.
…now I just feel old.
- Kinetic Mouse Car, August 4, 2022
- tekket (Česká Lípa, Czech Republic), April 21, 2022
1 of
1 people found the following review helpful:
Bear-ly there, December 24, 2021(This is a lightly-edited version of a review posted to the IntFict forums during the 2021 IFComp. My son Henry was born right before the Comp, meaning I was fairly sleep-deprived and loopy while I played and reviewed many of the games, so in addition to a highlight and lowlight, the review includes an explanation of how new fatherhood has led me to betray the hard work the author put into their piece)
I mentioned in my review of Finding Light that I was surprised to go so late in the Comp before finding a puzzley fantasy adventure – and here we are half a dozen entries further in, getting to the first game that centers on a kid. Despite the fact that you’re playing as an off-brand Care Bear, Brave Bear isn't particularly whimsical. There’s a creepy vibe to the dark presences that are scattered around the bear’s owner’s house, and the threat they pose seems darker than the toy-focused premise led me to expect. Unfortunately, this short game withholds the full picture of the plot, leaving inference to fill in the nature of the danger, and it also ends pretty quickly, with only a few simple puzzles to solve before the thing is done – there’s enough here to intrigue but not, alas, to satisfy.
The premise, of toys coming to life to help their owner, is a nice one, and the basics are definitely covered. Thematically, it’s all about the power of togetherness, and solving the puzzles requires building a team: recruiting other toys gives you the strength you need to banish the threatening miasmas that gate progress through the house (I imagined the Care Bear Stare, given my demographic). This is satisfying to work through, and the supporting cast – a Transformer, a toy car, several stuffed animals – are briefly but satisfyingly sketched. They also have a few abilities that are used to get the band together. These challenges are all simple enough, though they feel quite old school, since most of them require a CHARACTER, ACTION command syntax that I associate with Infocom games. The ABOUT text flags that this will be required, though, so it’s all fair enough.
I’m struggling to find much more to say about Brave Bear, though, since it doesn’t do much with this solid framework. This isn’t just a matter of its brevity; first, the owner and her relationship to your protagonist feel very archetypal, without much lived-in detail. Similarly, the house is quite generic, with the room descriptions spending more time mentioning exits to other parts of the map than offering up any scenery or anything that offeres a window into the owner’s life. Nor is the origin of the evil phantoms haunting the house ever explained, and the game ends without a climactic action showing the Bear rescuing the owner – there’s some mysterious ending text that hints at the real story, but it’s pretty thin gruel. It’s all implemented smoothly enough and it goes down easy, but I can’t help wishing Brave Bear had a little more to it – there’s a down side to wearing out one’s welcome, of course, but the game errs too much in the other direction.
Highlight: I liked the other toys, who definitely have a spark of personality coming through – my favorite was the nervous Transformer.
Lowlight: I was enjoying the game for what it was, so I was sorry to reach the overly-conclusory ending so soon.
How I failed the author: Henry was feeling a bit fussy while I was playing Brave Bear, so I was only able to play it in five minute chunks in between seeing to him, which probably made it hard for me to integrate all the different hints as to what’s going on.
- Spike, November 17, 2021
- Karl Ove Hufthammer (Bergen, Norway), November 15, 2021
- Zape, November 3, 2021
- Jade68, November 1, 2021
2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
A bear of very little fear, November 1, 2021I thought this was a fun little game with a simple story and fairly easy puzzles. It went by much quicker than I expected it to; I kept assuming that little details were going to come in to play at some point, when they actually didn’t(Spoiler - click to show), such as the transforming robot who never transforms. I went to the walkthrough twice. The first time, I had guessed what I needed to do, but must have done things in the wrong order (Spoiler - click to show) (using the music maker to light up the room). The second time, I don’t think I would have guessed what had to be done (Spoiler - click to show) (rescuing the doll with the car). There was a discussion at the end in which I had no idea what was being implied. All around, very sweet and memorable.
- OverThinking, October 25, 2021
2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
A short and simple parser game about a child's toy, October 23, 2021This is a brief parser game where you play as a child's teddy bear who can walk around. Your goal is to defeat fears and gather friends.
The map is a bit complex in layout but small. Each friend requires a different method to find. A couple of the puzzles I found pretty clever; others were easy, and others I had to resort to a walkthrough for.
The implementation is a bit spotty; characters respond but they don't always make sense, and sometimes you might now the right action you need to do but not how to type it so the game understands it.
Overall, I think this was solid idea that needed more testing and polish. I didn't see any testers credited, which I think would have helped.
- Xavid, October 19, 2021
- bkirwi, October 15, 2021
- Durafen, October 4, 2021
- Edo, October 3, 2021
1-15 of 15 | Return to game's main page