A Bear's Night Out

A Bear's Night Out is a delightful little adventure!

After dark, while your owner is asleep, you climb (or rather bounce) out of bed. You have to make sure everything is ready for the big day tomorrow, and knowing your owner, he'll have forgotten a bunch of stuff.

The map is very small, eleven rooms in total. While exploring these rooms, there are tons of fun stuff to discover and experiment with.(Pssst, the cat is a great playmate...)

Once you have seen all the rooms, experimented to your hearts content with all the funny stuff and start dealing with the puzzles in earnest, you'll see that not everything in this game is fluffy and soft and easygoing. None of the puzzles are fiendish, but they all require thorough examining of the game-space, a good deal of planning and some real-life puzzlesolving strategies. Of course, all of this is made both harder and more fun by the fact that you're about a foot tall...

A warm and fuzzy adventure.

This little classic is just as charming today as it was in 1997. There's a simple joy to this game, the way it remains sentimental without ever once dipping into the saccharine or the patronizingly childish. You could truly play this at any age and have a wonderful time. After all, who hasn't had a teddy bear or other stuffie that meant the world to them? Though I can't find the clip online, I remember even the rugged Jeremy Clarkson confessing to still having his childhood bear at home, saying that he wouldn't trade it for anything. This game, through its simple, kindly nature, taps into that attachment perfectly.

Several brilliant references here, and they're not only far more clever than just using some phrase, they're part of the puzzles! That's a bit risky on paper, as a total newcomer will not be familiar, but fortunately familiarity proves not to be necessary. You'll just smile a bit wider. This also has one of my favorite default responses for >d - "You tumble down, but being a soft bear, that's ok."

I will confess that one puzzle left me a bit baffled, the one leading to the dark place. Fortunately the game has a perfect in-game hint system, so I wasn't stuck. The only real complaint I have is that we never got something like this again from David Dyte.

A Bear's Night Out was nominated for an XYZZY award for Best Game in its second year. You play as a teddy bear exploring the house of your owner.

This is a classic 90's game. Tight puzzles, jokey references to other games, a real sense of atmosphere, many unexaminable objects. If you enjoyed Plotkin's or Nelson's early games, you will enjoy this game.

By the game's own count, it has 32 references to previous games, including letting you (Spoiler - click to show)play Curses!, Dungeon, and Adventureland.