You know you're a good patron if your guests greet you with a nod and a smile. They might not always say hello, but there's always a tip of the cap when they see you strolling around the hotel grounds. You know you're a particularly great patron if they do all of that despite the fact you also happen to be a rather large brown bear.
Now the usual advice if you see a bear in the woods is to do something along the lines of… running away. But not so when said bear happens to be Hank, a particularly cuddly sort of chap who may be a bear, but also has a line of thriving bed and breakfast resorts spread across the local vicinity. They may have once run from his giant paws and accompanying claws, but now word has spread across the Valley that he makes a mean French Onion soup and his handmade Cozy Butterscotch Beds are insanely comfortable.
The Bear and the Shark
Before Hank met an inflatable shark, the Valley had pretty much been abandoned by humans. While a few remained to obscure the local fauna and flora, there are references to a mysterious fire being the cause of the Valley's tourism decline. What was once a thriving place for people to enjoy and get away to has been left abandoned. But, thanks to Hank and a few pals, you can work to bring the people back to the Valley, one vacation destination at a time.
Weirdly enough, the regeneration effort does actually involve the inflatable shark. In what feels like a dodgy scheme that's going to eventually bite Hank on the butt, you'll work together to revitalize each location one step at a time. The first one is a rustic number, with small rooms and not many amenities beyond an outdoor toilet hut you can restore, but it's a good place to get to grips with the building and customization mechanics. Before you start building a room, you'll have to ensure you have the requisite items - like a bed for a bedroom, or a shower, sink, and toilet for a bathroom. It feels a little confusing at first, but soon you'll have pockets filled with all kinds of things made from the crafting materials you collect just ready to go.
It's not quite as intense as Stardew Valley or other sims in that sense though, as crafting materials are just bits and pieces you'll find around the Valley - stacks of wood near trees, metal and nails at the scrap yard, stone by the mountains, and so on. Later you'll need to provide food for your guests, and even those ingredients can be snapped up from pre-sown gardens and plants. It does mean that once you've scooped up all available materials the days can sometimes feel a little too empty. There's not much you can do without the means to earn more money or collect more Valuables - aka trash - that you can trade for decorative items from the dumpster-dwelling raccoon, Took. The Valley unlocks incrementally too, which makes the initial few hours of the game feel additionally restricted.
The Bear Minimum
However, the more locations you add to your hospitality empire, the busier you become, as the majority of your time will be spent keeping your guests happy. Each guest request that comes through will ask for certain criteria to be met. Initially, that's Comfort and Decoration, which can be improved by adding more furniture and additional details like rugs, lights, ornaments, and artwork. But as you expand to ski lodges and motels, you'll also have to consider Heat and Hygiene, along with specific amenity requests. Matching the right guest with the right room in the right location is essentially a numbers game, but a perfect match will mean a better review as well as more money in your pocket to plow back into improving each location. It's a delicious gameplay loop that rewards every new addition you make to a venue. A new rug here and an upgraded bed there will mean your hotel's overall score goes up too, bringing in a wider range of guests and requirements to cater to.
Once you've ticked all the shark's boxes for each venue for the core storyline, you'll also have further sub-objectives to complete if you so wish. Doing these are pretty awesome purely because of the perks they unlock too, and that's not just the cute little tee and shorts combo you can unlock for Hank. These rewards make it easier to manage your growing empire, from the ability to craft away at the builder's table to other things like improving your walking speed or expanding your backpack.
Plus there are plenty of weird and quirky creatures to meet in the Valley too. They might not be crucial to the game's overarching story, but they'll provide you with side quests that give you a few extra things to fill your time with. All of that adds up to make Bear and Breakfast a brilliantly compact management sim. It won't completely eat up your free time, but it's delightful from start to finish. Its crisp, clean, cartoonish graphics make it an immensely satisfying world to exist in for some 15-20 hours or so, and the writing is regularly brilliant. Who would have thought a bear could make for such a great B&B owner?
Bear and Breakfast is out now on PC, with a Nintendo Switch release coming in the near future.
