Point-and-Click Adventure games were once the main genre. Day of the tentacle, Sam & Max, The Secret of Monkey Island, all are classics of the Point-and-Click Adventure genre. Saturation of the market and a lack of innovation, together with the upcome of First Person Shooters as DOOM, Quake and Half-Life, lead to the inevitable decline of the genre. For around 10 years, the Point-and-Click Adventure genre disappeared from the market. With the introduction of crowdfunding, indie developers and digital distribution platforms, not to forget smartphones, the Point-and-Click Adventure genre seems to be back for good.
I have had the pleasure to receive a review copy of Bear with me. Will this game bring me back to the good old days
Bear With Me (found here) is, as you should have guessed from my brief history lesson, a Point-and-Click Adventure game (applause everyone!). More specific, a story drive, noir horror, Point-and-Click Adventure game. It is an episodic game, developed and published Exordium Games. The 10-year-old Amber Ashworth must team up with Ted E. Bear. Ted is a washed up, alcoholic detective and is actually a teddy bear! Who would have guessed that, huh? Our sympathetic duo has to investigate the disappearance of Amber’s brother. The whole story hints heavily that it is made up in Amber’s mind. While this allows for creative freedom regarding plot and dialogue, it doesn’t mean that Bear With Me is a game for children. This is a horror detective game after all. The story deals with murder, alcoholism, crime and a pyromania antagonist. These are all set in a toy’s based universe, but that are items that you won’t find in a game for children. While it has its horror moments, most of the game is filled with hilarious dialogues such as the distress message from a developer, or the white hockey mask that her friend Jason wants to borrow. There are a lot of references, and I loved each and every one of them.
Bear with Me stands out with its art style, or better, with its complete lack of colors. True to the Point-and-Click Adventure genre, Bear with Me doesn’t need to have high-end graphics or cutting edge realistic models. The game uses a monochrome palette with a splat of red when needed. There are some colors, but those are mainly preserved for the cutscenes. Cutscenes read like a comic book narrated by Ted himself, with a red line connecting the dots, which is a nice touch! The lack-of-concept is something you also hear in the music. There isn’t a soundtrack playing in the background. Bear with Me only gives you sound when needed, when a door opens, or a thunder strikes. It fits the atmosphere that this game breaths perfectly
The gameplay, of course, consists of a lot of clicking. And you will click every single thing in each room, just to hear the comments Amber or Ted has about it. While on paper, this might sound dull, in-game it really works amazingly. The game has some very good written dialogues and wonderful voice actors who really bring the characters alive. I really like the way Ted speaks, it suits the noir horror detective theme. Not only Ted has a well worked out character. You’ll come across other persons, each feels like a deeply evolved being with a huge backstory. I really like Rusty Rocket and the Mug Shot Brothers. They feel very natural to the game with their background story.
But, I have to be the critic as well. Towards the end of the episode, the game starts slacking. At this point, you will have heard all the witty comments included in this episode. There is a lot of back traveling required to advance and you will have to bear the loading times. They can feel rather long due to the amounts of loading times you’ll come across. The grandma-speed at which Amber and Ted walk doesn’t really help either. Traveling through several rooms, looking for all the clues feels a bit duller than needed to be.
And don’t think that the game will help you. Bear with Me offers little to no help at all. Holding the right mouse button will reveal all the intractable items, but it is up to you to figure out how everything is connected. One time, I tried to connect 2 items but failed. Amber gave me the extremely vague hint that it takes 2 of that. But since I was trying to connect 2 items, I didn’t know what to co. So I had to travel again through all the rooms, on snail’s speed, looking for that (hopefully) one item that I was missing. It is nice that there are items that have no purpose at all, or at least not in this episode, it makes the game harder. But that should have been countered with more helpful tips and hints. But thanks to the right mouse button trick, you don’t have to go pixel hunting! The interaction with different items is very clear, you can talk to it, or use it. So, it’s not all doom and gloom but very clean and user-friendly.
Still, those are minor complaints in an otherwise amazing game. At the end of the episode, when the game got back into its usual speed, I was looking forwards to the next playable area: Paper City. But that will be for the next episode because I came at the end of this one. It took me around 3 hours, which is amazing considering the low price for this episode.
An extra selling point for Bear with Me is that the story line is not linear. You can replay it, and do different things which will hopefully result in different approaches in the next episodes. I say the next ones, because in this first episode the differences are rather minimal, which is expected. This is after all the first episode, can’t expect 5 different story endings this early in the game. However, seeing the quality of this first episode, I am confident that the next episodes will be even better. And those will be games that I will play, because I am genuinely intrigued with the plot and characters.
Bear with Me is a Point-and-Click horror detective game that takes you back to the good old days of the genre. Fans of the genre will appreciate its deeply developed characters, strong dialogues and noir setting. Despite the minor setbacks, Bear with Me is a solid adventure, set in a universe begging for further exploration.
| The Good: | The Bad: |
| + Visual style | – Loading times and slow walk speed |
| + Excellent written dialogues and voice actors | – Vague clues/hints |
| + Humor with a lot of references | – Not yet really non-linear gameplay |
Score: 4 out of 5:
