Brave Bear

(Some spoilers.)

Brave Bear is a short and sweet parser game in Inform 6 about a stuffed bear saving its owner. It has some elements that reminded me of the first Toy Story, but tonally the game is a lot closer to Stuffed Fables. There’s the core of a good snack-sized game here, but unfortunately Brave Bear suffers from underimplementation and some puzzle choices that don’t fit that well with the game’s overarching ethos.

Thematically, Brave Bear is a game about courage, love, and friendship. The text continually reinforces this, telling you from the very beginning that you are a Brave Bear and reminding you throughout that you are accomplishing tasks with the love and joy of your friends. The puzzles reinforce this as well, for the most part: You have to overcome an embodiment of fear and save some of your fellow toys, often with the assistance of other toys. I’m on board with this. For one, courage is an underappreciated virtue; by all means let’s celebrate it. I’ve also got three kids at home, and while they’re all older than the owner in Brave Bear, they’re not that much older. And they still love their stuffies.

However, three of the puzzles in Brave Bear require the player to use an attack-type verb. While the actual in-game actions that these verbs produce aren’t that violent, having to type ATTACK [noun] as the solution to the first puzzle damaged the mood that the game had initially set for me, and I never fully re-entered that mood. While this is one way to demonstrate courage, I can’t help but think there are other ways of doing so that fit the game better thematically. (There is, in fact, another puzzle that requires a toy to demonstrate courage in a nonviolent way.) In addition, because attacking didn’t really seem to fit with the game’s ethos, it didn’t actually occur to me that that was what needed to be done to solve the first puzzle. I had to resort to the walkthrough (although that was the only time I used the walkthrough).

Brave Bear is also sparely-written and sparsely implemented. The spare writing works, as it reinforces the sense of abandonment in the owner’s house. But, despite there being few objects in the game with which to interact, those objects are often not implemented—even when they seem like they might be important. Examples include the bed (when the player is actually in the bed, at least), the door to the owner’s bedroom, and the washing machine.

A couple of other minor critiques: There’s some inconsistent use of pronouns, which threw me off: Certain toys get a masculine or feminine singular pronoun in one sentence and then a gender-neutral plural pronoun in the next. Also, even though I thought I understood what the owner needed to be saved from—namely, the fear of the unknown tied to a move—I didn’t understand why the ending had Father also cowering. Perhaps something happened to Mother? If so, I missed where else in the game that was indicated. The result was that I found the end somewhat confusing rather than satisfying.

Overall, Brave Bear is a cute game with an adorable idea behind it, but it could be improved with some additional attention, both to implementation and puzzle choices.