Bear and Breakfast is a life simulation adventure game where players control Hank, a bear building and running a bed and breakfast. Hank creates multiple BnBs to bring humans back to the area. Players gather supplies, build different types of rooms, craft or buy furniture, and invite tourists to stay at their inns. There are tons of characters to interact with, both human and animal. As the explorable world expands, so do the plot and mysteries surrounding the forested wilderness.
New players to the game will enjoy the casual gameplay of Bear and Breakfast. It has similar vibes to Stardew Valley and other life management games, but with a new twist. The game does a good job at giving players information through tutorials that pop up on the side of the screen, and some questions people have initially can be answered by opening the game controls, such as knowing R is the rotate button for furniture. There are some things that players figure out after playing the game for a few hours that’d be helpful to know right from the start.
5 Collect Tons Of Resources
Collect as many resources on the ground as possible because they refresh and respawn often. This will save players time down the line when unlocking buildings and making furniture because those require lots of basic resources. If players have a surplus of them on hand, they don’t have to go out searching every time they need to make something new.
Different places provide varying resources, like The A24 having metal and rock, Sawdust and Timber Crossing having wood, and Highlake having plants for food. All of the locations on the map should be visited often. That is easier to do by unlocking the Bus Stops for fast travel.
4 Utilize The Bear Stash
Any extra items can be put in the Bear Stash bin near the Pawn Voyage truck. It can hold any item type, from resources and ingredients to decorations and crafted items. This helps a lot with inventory management, especially because items placed in the Bear Stash can be accessed from any of the bins, meaning the items stay the same and transfer over no matter the location.
If a player's inventory is full but they collect or craft something, the game will give them a pop-up pointing to the backpack at the bottom of their screen. This lets them reclaim some items that may have been lost, but only has a certain amount of slots.
3 Keep An Eye On The Mini-Map
All resources sparkle when on screen, but that can be easily missed or difficult to see. The mini-map is invaluable when it comes to finding those resources around the world. This is especially helpful for items like metal at the dump in The A24 where metal scraps can blend into the bigger trash piles. A great way to spend the night if players don't want to sleep is by gathering resources, but it gets dark enough that the mini-map is the easiest way to find things.
The map not only shows what location items are at but what type of items they are. When hovered over on the map, items' names will appear, like strawberries, but some will be given a generic name, such as various types of woods bundled in a group being called a wood pile. The map also has a key on the side to explain what each icon means.
2 Know What Items To Look For
Trash is one of the types of currency in the game. It's used to purchase decor items from dumpsters. Unlike other resources, garbage doesn't show up on the map when it's ready to collect. Players can walk the path the humans normally do to find trash, but some of it can be difficult to spot, so keep an eye out for when the E button pops up.
When quests are available or completed, the game will use a yellow arrow to point the correct direction to go. However, if the player isn't in the correct zone, such as being in Timber Crossing instead of Sawdust to discover a new area, the arrow will not show up until they are in the correct zone. The map shows players where exits to the area are, but not which area it leads to unless the sign by the exit in-game is checked.
1 Build Quality Over Quantity
Rooms have multiple statistics associated with them that tourists will want to be fulfilled. Furniture bought from the dumpster will only give decor, whereas items built by the player give both decor and comfort points. Blueprints can be purchased at the Pawn Voyage vans and these can include both new items and upgraded versions of previous items.
As the game progresses, guests will ask for higher-quality rooms with more amenities. They can specifically want a high-comfort room or need to be by a bathroom. Unless a quest requires players to build a certain amount of rooms in an inn, players should work toward upgrading their existing rooms instead. This will save them time down the line when lower-level tourists stop sending requests and there are only ones with higher standards. It should be done in sequence with quests though, so players don't have to revert rooms back to lower levels to complete tasks.
Bear and Breakfast is available on Microsoft Windows and Nintendo Switch.