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Number of Ratings: 66
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Showing All | Show by Page - k42write, October 28, 2023
- gattociao, August 18, 2023
- elysee, June 5, 2023
SPAG
It's a genuinely charming premise that author David Dyte carries off with humor, and as with Ralph, that premise shapes both the plot and the puzzles in a way that makes Bear's Night Out feel fresh.
>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction
ABNO is a delightful game. It is well-written and, for the most part, well-coded, including a number of details which serve to enrich the childlike, enchanted game world. For example, the television runs a very funny infomercial for a hardware z-chip, to turn your computer into "the interactive fiction machine of your dreams!" The cat's random event routines create an endearing illusion of feline unpredictability. Judiciously chosen box quotes enhance the game's sense of magic and wonder. Finally, perhaps the best touch of all, all the elements of the full score are written alliteratively: "furry fashion" for wearing your coat, "kindness to kittens" for petting the cat, etc. The combined result of all these details is a world well worth visiting by children and adults alike.
- fartbox, May 5, 2022
- RustyBones, May 4, 2022
- Cryptic Puffin, November 29, 2021
- Pirate Gopher (Fort Worth TX), September 2, 2021
3 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
Fluffy adventure., March 12, 2021A 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.
2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
Impossibly Charming, August 26, 2020This 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.
- mishz132, August 5, 2020
- quackoquack, June 10, 2020
- Zape, June 3, 2020
- Felix Pleșoianu (Bucharest, Romania), May 17, 2020
- Zoe Victoria (Under your bed), April 24, 2020
- Case, January 26, 2020
- erzulie, October 15, 2019
- Wanderlust, August 25, 2019
- shornet (Bucharest), October 22, 2018
- Cory Roush (Ohio), July 14, 2017
- looksharp (American midwest), May 20, 2017
- lkdc, March 14, 2017
3 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
An old-school game. A teddy bear explores the house of his IF-loving owner, February 3, 2016A 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.
- Guenni (At home), January 24, 2016
- Aryore, December 12, 2015
- Thrax, March 12, 2015
- KGH (North Carolina), June 10, 2013
- Andrew Schultz (Chicago), May 7, 2013
- Floating Info, April 3, 2013
- QotC, January 26, 2013
- E.K., August 20, 2012
- Herr Rau (München, Germany), May 1, 2012
- Nav (Bristol, UK), December 4, 2011
- sunny and mild (South Africa), October 4, 2011
- JohnW (Brno, Czech Republic), March 16, 2011
- Walter Sandsquish, February 2, 2011
- snickerdoddle, January 28, 2011
- HarukaKat, October 24, 2010
- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), August 23, 2010
- Dave Chapeskie (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada), August 4, 2010
- lagran-G-an (Tel-Aviv, Israel), June 26, 2010
- o0pyromancer0o, April 23, 2010
10 of
10 people found the following review helpful:
Well worth a look, January 16, 2010In A Bear's Night Out, you play the part of a teddy bear who comes to life when his owner goes to sleep. The object of the game is to set up items for a teddy bear picnic. Your owner is quite forgetful (as an aside, he is the writer of this game). This piece of Interactive Fiction is over 10 years old, being first released in 1997, but it's well worth a look.
It's quite a comedic and charming little game. The author never forgets that the main character here is a teddy bear, thus neither does the one playing said teddy bear. You are small and short, thus have a hard time reaching things that are up on a table, as well as other objects. You will often find yourself searching around for something to help you get up to a higher area. Being able to reach the power button on a TV is something you would normally take for granted.
There are poems and quotes that appear from time to time, in a box of text near the top of the screen. They are often humorous, and always appropriate to what's going on in the game at the time.
There are not many PC's in this game, well at least not that you can interact with. Your owner is asleep, and the stuffed moose are not "alive" such as you are. This leaves only a housecat to interact with. That said, the cat is very well done. The relationship between the cat and the bear is almost touching.
I did find myself stuck in a few sections, though that's not unusual for me. There was one instance where items were being added to my inventory, without my knowledge. Now a puzzle is a puzzle, but I only realized that I had these items by cheating and consulting some hints within the game. (The hints were well done, by the way, revealing clues little by little.) I think the game could've been improved with some mention that you've received the items. That's the most I can say on this particular scenario without spoilers.
There are a few problems with commands such as this:
>look at papers
A dreadfully messy pile of old exam papers, study notes, letters, junk mail, bills, walkthroughs for adventure games, recipes, newspaper articles, medical records, and who knows what else.
Towards the middle of the pile of papers you find a featureless white cube, but this fails to hold your interest, and you place it back.
>x white cube
I only understood you as far as wanting to examine the white button.
Not only can you not look at the white cube at all (it was a random text message only, which disappointed me), but the message I got in response is all wrong. Here's another such problem (I've replaced an item here to prevent spoilers):
>push ball into basket
You can't see any such thing.
>push ball
Into the picnic basket? Good idea!
There are quite a few surprises in this game that I dare not reveal due to spoilerage. Some of them are in-jokes to the IF community. The fact that this game seems to have been geared towards children (and has been used as an education aid in the classroom), leads one to wonder at the references to IF history. That said, the adult IF enthusiast will find quite a bit of humour in these references.
There's quite a bit of entertaining things to do in A Bear's Night Out that are just for fun. For example, there are a few fun things to do with the cat, you can call 911 on the phone, and then there are a few funny default responses such as this:
>plugh
A hollow voice says `Obviously, you are in the wrong game.'
[Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
That trick never works.
-- Bullwinkle J. Moose and Rocky Squirrel]
I found the game to be a very enjoyable romp through an IF programmer's house... as a sentient teddy bear.
- tigersfan (Durham, NC), October 8, 2009
- Pepisolo, September 30, 2009
- Shchekotiki, August 3, 2009
- four1475 (Manhattan, KS), April 10, 2009
- Cendare, January 14, 2009
- Karl Ove Hufthammer (Bergen, Norway), January 12, 2009
- Audiart (Davis, CA), January 8, 2009
- Genjar (Finland), August 31, 2008
- Martin Braun (Berlin, Germany), July 30, 2008
- LisariaUS, July 17, 2008
- Sarah Mitty (Ypsilanti, Michigan), June 9, 2008
- Grunion Guy (Portland), June 6, 2008
- felicitations, May 3, 2008
6 of
7 people found the following review helpful:
Utterly charming, April 21, 2008Bear is a tenderly written romp through the eyes of a beloved teddy bear, appropriate for players of all ages -- it's a great intro to IF for kids, but still captivating for adults who remember their childhood stuffed friends fondly. Puzzles are tricky but solvable, and the prose is top-quality: Bear does a great job with tone and capturing the POV of a teddy bear. It's one of my very favourite IF games. And I don't just say that because I now have the wonderful fortune to cohabit with Matt and Terry Moose :)
- Jonathan Blask (Milwaukee, WI, USA), April 21, 2008
- brattish (Canada), April 7, 2008
- Hans Möller (Sweden), April 5, 2008
- Cheryl L (Australia), March 11, 2008
10 of
11 people found the following review helpful:
More fun than I expected, March 5, 2008This IF Comp entry may be a little gimmicky, but the gimmick definitely worked for me. What's not to like about a story that features a teddy bear as a protagonist?
A Bear's Night Out (ABNO) is Mr. Dyte's first released work, and it has the feel of a first work -- a little rough around a few edges, a sense that maybe more effort was spent on code than prose. Nonetheless, the main character seems to touch a soft spot in the hearts of most people, and this -- coupled with the consistent but novel logic of the teddy bear universe -- is what makes the piece stand out.
ABNO's fifth place finish in the 1997 IF Comp is a testament to the quality of Mr. Dyte's originality and style, as is the game's receipt of the "Best Setting" XYZZY Award for that year. Lest you think this piece is all gimmick and no meat, note that it was a finalist for "Best Game", as well, and that fans of the story have taken the time to translate it into both German and Spanish.
I do think this game would be suitable for a children's story, assuming the child has some capacity for sustained problem-solving and perhaps the over-the-shoulder advice of a few family members. Only one puzzle seemed likely to stump a group of players for any length of time; be prepared to use the gentle in-game hint system to avoid the bad kind of frustration, if needed.
Though I give it only three stars overall ("good, not great"), it is one of the more memorable stories I've played. I do recommend that you try this game, particularly when you are feeling young-at-heart.
- jfpbookworm (Hamburg, New York), February 25, 2008
- tfbk, January 10, 2008
- Wendymoon, October 26, 2007
- Emily Short, October 22, 2007
- Michael R. Bacon (New Mexico), October 21, 2007
Baf's Guide
Teddy bears, as anyone who owns one can tell you, come to life when you're asleep. This game puts you in one bear's shoes, making mischief and preparing for a big day. Although allegedly an "interactive children's story", it will probably leave most genuine children baffled, through both its vocabulary and its several major references to other prominent text adventures. Small, with good puzzles based on overcoming the limitations of being two feet tall and made of cloth. Contains an adaptive hint menu.
-- Carl Muckenhoupt
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