Game isn't really fun, just going around areas till you kill and eat every living thing in that area. And the "story" of the game is locked away in hidden temples that you have to find throughout some of the areas, one of which you have to get passed an annoying mountain platforming section where if you make one mistake and fall you die and have to start from the cave every single time. Then there's the secret "fun" place where you have to go through an obstacle course that looks like it belongs in Roblox and is hard to do considering the fact that you can literally fall through the floor at any time. Hitboxes are terrible, you have to be inside the thing you want to kill and aim at a weird angle. The birds just fly straight up before you can even get next to them so your best bet is to just sprint up to them and aim up immediately. Chasing the bunnies around is annoying unless you can get them stuck on a piece of terrain where their AI can't tell that it is stuck and needs to turn around (thank god for this though, cause otherwise killing them would be even more of a ♥♥♥♥♥). And there are probably a lot more things i could mention but wont cause aint nobody got time for that!

Yes.

I love this game! Being a bear is awesome to me because my favorite animal is a bear. The only problem is it is basicly impossible to kill a Tan Rabbit. I hope the game developers fix that because if it runs by you you cant kill it. The only time I killed one was when it glitched into a corner.

I'm not normally a person who writes reviews for games, but after hearing and seeing some of things others are saying about this game and about how the creator of the game has become discouraged due to particular reviews I felt compelled to share my thoughts on this game.

While it is certainly not a masterpiece or a majorly innovative concept, it has a delightful charm to it. I belive that too many people come into this game expecting it to have the same off-the-walls wacky gameplay that Goat Simulator brought to the table and find themselves disapointed when the find out that there aren't any people to bowl over or explosions to create. Bear Simulator instead focuses on is creating a setting where there is a story to be told that the player has to discover by exploring as much as they can and finding food and clues as to what's going on. Everything is not as ordinary as it seems as the player progresses, and the fun is in slowly discovering new things, which admittedly is not for everyone.

A notable discovery early on is the fact that you are not a full grown bear, but rather a cub. In one of the very first areas that you will explore there will be a sign stating that a cub and not any full grown bears reside in the area. If you stop to think about it some more you'll realize that all the other animals you encounter are rather large comparative to you. And this brings me to anoter common misconception about the game. Many people who have played this game find it unfathomable that you, as a bear, are not smart enough to eat certain foods or are getting killed by a fox. While a normal adult bear would have no trouble with these things, you are just a stupid and frail cub and will need to eat everything in sight to grown stronger and smarter.

To end this I would just like to give a simple message to the developer of this game. Don't give up, man. A lot have people have found the actual method to enjoying your game. It's completely normal to make mistakes at the beginning which will net a lot of criticism on you. If you feel you need to take a break then go ahead, but please don't say you'll shelve your talent away forever. You've managed to achieve something here that plenty of other people can only dream about being able to do by getting your own game published and put up for sale on steam. I am one of those people. I don't know if you'll even get this message, but if you do, then whatever you decide to do in the end, then just make sure you're happy with your decision.

UPDATE 3: Damn. This guy gives me a lot to update about. Because of the negative reception Bear Simulator got, John said in a Kickstarter update (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1330754003/bear-simulator/posts/1510978) he's not going to work on the game anymore.
UPDATE 2: The developer flagged my review as abusive. It has since been repealed by (I'm guessing) a Steam moderator.
UPDATE: The dev has deleted my forum post. I made a post warning people about the game and it was deleted without warning. It looks like this is happening to other posts, too.
I was a $50 Kickstarter backer. The dev has not communicated anything. I got my alpha access 3 weeks before release. This game has recieved no bugtesting and John Farjay (the developer) will not listen or respond to any form of input. This game is a poorly made and buggy mess. The codes the backers are not personalized and anyone can use them. The exciting area the developer promised to backers is a shed with a picture of a frog in it. The developer rarely posts to social media and rarely if ever responds to messages. The game was supposed to come out over a year ago, but John went on hiatus for a year without a single word. This game is a mess as it is, and I don't see it changing in the future.

You need 15 intelligence to eat a hamburger in this game. That about sums it up.

Poor animation, poor sound, poor bear simulation. The world feels incredibly empty as you walk aimlessly through nondescript valleys with little signs of life. It's hard to keep track of where you've been, especially since there's no map. Every now and then you'll come across an oversized animal or bug, but they are few and far between, and will either attack you or flee. Beyond that you eat food such as berries, bugs, junk food and fish which will give you stat points.

The developer could have focused a bit more on adding animation and sound to you as the bear, and the environment. There could have been birds flying in the air, schools of fish in the river, and tiny bugs crawling around. Instead this is an entirely too dull and uninspired experience which I only dragged myself through after having backed it on Kickstarter maybe just a bit too optimistically.

edit: I didn't realize this would get attention; I owe it to the game and its developer to give a serious review.

For this game to be fun, it would have to push you along too fast to take in the flaws. However, it actively STOPS you from progressing until you've combed the entire area looking for +int stat items in random corners, causing the charmingly basic animations and buggy movement/combat to become frustrating as you spend more and more time repeating them.

I did not finish this game, and as far as I can tell, neither did Farjay.

This has to be the most poorly designed game I have played in a while. and I hate the fact that I have to hate this game, because the premise is fun and the dev sense of humour is great, and also I backed this game in Kickstarter, but I can't recommend it to anybody.

I love exploring in this kind of titles, but the Stamine system ruins the whole fun of running around and discovering new things, because absolutely everything you do uses stamine and if you run out of it you start getting hurt just by running, something that shouldn't happen in an open game. This wouldn't be a problem because you cain regain health and stamine by eating food, mushrooms and defeating enemies, but what is even the point if those things rarely appear in the game?

In the same vein, the "Intelligence" system is so frustrating. I'm so happy to find something new to eat to level up my character, just to discover that I'm so stupid that I can't even touch it. There's absolutely nothing to point me towards how getting more intelligence, and even if it were, there is NOTHING in this huge overworld for me to gain more XP or Intelligence. Is painfully frustrating discovering great stuff that you can't even read or grab.

And I know this is a "joke game", but what is wrong with the animals balance? How in the bloody hell a freaking RAT obliterated me? I'M A BEAR.

As I said, I really wanted to like and love this game, but I'm not masochist enough to be running around the same places over and over again with no stamina, no strenght and no intelligence, and no elements to get more of those anywhere to be seen. I guess I'll try to fight enemies with my valves or eating off my hats to not starve to death. Hopefully this things will get patched out in the near future, and if so, then I would gladly rejoin the adventure of exploring and recommend it to some friends, but in the state that is right now, yeah, it's playable, but absolutely not enjoyable.

Bear Simulator = Faux "Simulator" humor game + Bears + A low rent Skyrim

For a little context, this was a game sucessfully Kickstarted years ago for something to the tune of $100k. The KS itself was something of a mess but we aren't here to review a KS campaign. We're here to review a game and chew bubblegum. And I'm all outta bubblegum. ...Wait no, I still have some! ::obnoxious chewing noises::

Bear Simulator is yet another one of those kinds of "Simulator" games that are to actual simulations what mockumentaries are to documentaries. In Bear Simulator you are (duh) a Bear. Although there is a plot, there is little to no narration or introduction as to what your motivation for getting up and out of the den in the morning should be. Most of the gameplay consists of wandering around the environment to find hidden bits of food and/or animals to eat. Eating causes your stats to go up which in turn allows you to access more areas, read more hints, and eat better items. 90% of the game is this, a sort of exploratory collect-a-thon.

There is a story to unfold and other objectives to complete as well, but completing these objectives basically consists of having stats high enough to get into a certain area/being methodical enough to find whatever hidden thing you need. This process is made that much more laborious by the fact that the game world, which is quite large actually, has no map. You'll need to simply memorize where everything is and this ends up resulting in a lot of needless backtracking.

The environments themselves range from reasonably pretty to absolutely hideous. Some areas were made with a bit of care whilst others suffer from terrible texture stretching/shimmering. Still, it is a bit of chill-paced fun to explore areas, eat stuff, and examine some of the funny notes/items and such scattered about the world. That world feels rather barren, however, with really not much to do other than eat things, and all food/animals are finite so once you've eaten them it makes everything feel even more like a ghost town.

There is also "combat" to be had. It is extremely awkward and imprecise and often it's better to run away from that scary frog rather than fight it. There is a charge attack you can unlock but since it is really quite hard to hit enemies it is sometimes better to simply spam your claw swipe and hope you don't get too jacked up. It definitely did not make me feel like a mighty bear. More like an oversized teddy bear.

As you get more powerful/capable, you will be able to venture further out from the starting hub-like zone and discover a lot of strange happenings and mysteries. It's interesting as passive story-telling but doesn't grip you like a bear-hug should.

Become a bear if you...

• Just REALLY like the concept. There is some interesting stuff in the game and yeah, I thought some of it was actually funny (really corny, but funny).
  
• Want to play an adventure game that is really different. This is that at least.
  
• Are willing to gamble that the MANY rough patches will be smoothed out by the developer.

Feed the alligators instead if you...

• Don't want to play a very amateur-looking/feeling game.
  
• Aren't willing to cope with bugs.
  
• Are averse to memey-corny type humor, and/or hate these "LOLRANDOM Simulator" type games.

The Bottom Line

Although I'm actually getting a little bit of enjoyment out of being a bear, I can't, at this point in time, recommend it to anyone else (particularly at this price point). I've already encountered far too many bugs and the first time you see some of the hokey AI and animation you are going to laugh for sure... For all the wrong reasons. I'm really hoping that the developer continues to work on the game's bear necessities. If he does, this wouldn't actually be a bad quirky little adventure game. Would I come back to update my review in the face of future updates? Does a bear meme in the woods?

This is a very cute, fun game, that I am really enjoying. It's not rocket science, nor is it the most polished piece on the block, but I think it's worth it for $15. There's a variety of things to do and interact with, the pop culture references are great, and the music and scenery are worthwhile. If you want a bit of silly fun, somewhere between Goat Simulator and something serious, I'd recommend this. 9/10, would bear again

ETA- I understand some people's grief with the kickstarter process surrounding this product, and I don't think all of the criticism is unfounded. However, this game is still worthwhile if a chill exploration and gathering game, with a little bit of crack-ish humour and plot thrown in is what you're looking for.