Bear & Breakfast (2022)

In many ways, Bear and Breakfast reminded me that taking it slow in a game is absolutely fine and even encouraged for exploration and world building. Nonetheless, it has some limitations, including the lack of quality-of-life features, the absence of an item sale system, curtailed player choices, and the lack of DualSense features.

Bear and Breakfast is a cozy management simulator that has you playing as a cute bear running a B&B, but that’s about it. It seems almost like the developers learned nothing from the reception of the PC and Switch port of the game a year ago, which suffered from the same issues. I really wanted to like this game, given the delightful visuals and charming characters, but the lack of polish and unintuitive controls on the PlayStation 5 make it a hard game to recommend.

There's a massive gulf between finding a game's concept charming and actually wanted to play that game, and Bear and Breakfast never comes anywhere close to crossing that gaping chasm.

Bear and Breakfast is a fun and friendly management adventure where an affable bear becomes the leader of a tourist hostel franchise.

The most glaring problem for Bear and Breakfast is that controlling the game is an immense chore on Switch, which means it ends up being a chore to help a bear complete his own chores. Opening up new areas and completing specific goals to move forward in the game is rewarding, but trying to navigate menus with the clumsy control scheme isn't worth getting out of bed for. Despite its flaws, Bear and Breakfast is no doubt a better game on PC, so play it there if you're smarter than the average bear.