Play existential-bear-game
I'm Beary Sorry's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Mood | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Fun | #15 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Overall | #18 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Creativity | #44 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- The art and design of this game and the UI are masterfully done. The story was well thought out and meaningful and I was laughing at the different references throughout:) Some choices in the story would have been more engaging but still a charming and endearing game:) --- Loved the look and feel of this! 10/10 character growth. I did feel like Salmon's change of heart was a little abrupt, but you already wrote SO much for a week that I don't think there's much to complain about there. Super impressive for the length of time you guys had, I would play more of this game just to learn about the characters! --- 31/40
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Comments
SUPER cute game, and I LOVE THE PUNS (some of them were unBearable tho 😁) The lawn mower of whatever you guys used for the roar had me dying of laugher :3 The story is amazing and I'm impressed by the depth of the story
While I'm not a big fan of visual novels, this game definitely compelled me to keep playing! I would have wished for more interaction rather than clicking through, but that may just be how visual novels are. Overall, its a beary clean game
AHHH this was such a cute and adorable game! I saw earlier in a comment that your writer whipped out like 19 pages in just a couple days - AMAZING!! I have no idea how your writer managed that, but that is pure impressive! :3 The UI meshes so well with all the other graphics and the animations and sound effects just puts the level of polish and finesses to the next level! ㅠ ㅡㅠ Just gorgeous work overall! Like others, I too would have loved to see more branching, but given the time limit of this jam, what you've achieved already is downright near impossible!
One of the most charming games I've played (not only from this jam, but overall)! ^ ㅡ^
Really loved this game. To be fair, I haven't completely finished yet, but so far way I have played is amazing. The drawn characters with the 3d background actually go together pretty nicely. The dialogue is funny but also gets you invested in the story as it goes on. I was playing it on stream but eventually had to move on because I realized I was basically sitting there in silence just reading the dialogue and laughing. This isn't a bad thing, I just got really invested and sort of forgot about the stream.
As I said, I am still in the middle of my playthrough, but I do have some feedback. So if some of this feedback doesn't make sense. Ignore it. That said, really my only feedback, and this might be feedback on the only genre of visual novels, is I would like more interactive segments. Sometimes it feels like you are just reading the story and not interacting with it which makes you disconnect from the main character. It like you are just watching it all go down in 3rd person rather than experiencing it interactively as the character. Also, more choices early on in the story would be nice. I think getting the player to feel like they making choices early on helps a lot.
Despite that, I have enjoyed this game a lot. It's very polished and has a lot of content for a game jam game. Absolutely charming and I hope to see more work like this!
Really enjoyed this game! The writing is great, it sends a good message, and I was thoroughly entertained by all the bear puns! The art work is super good, loved the backgrounds and the design of Salmon and Bumble. The humor didn't seem out of place with the rest of the game, and you managed to balance both the serious and funny moments! Overall, would love an expansion on the game!
My only feedback would have been to have the messages between Salmon and Bumble be displayed on the messaging app itself. It was somewhat of a disconnect having to look at blank messages on the computer screen and realizing that the chat dialogue was on the same panel as the dialogue in the other parts of the story. Additionally, the bear noises were pretty loud on my end and I almost got jumpscared at the splash screen :D. It could be toned down to be less jarring with the music (though I get why it was there).
Other than that, excellent job Team Bear!
Thank you for your kind words!
When we were working on the script I was inspired by a quote I heard somewhere: "Sometimes I write a million funny lines just to make the sad lines sink." (that quote is heavily paraphrased, I don't remember the original) That was sort of the goal of the mixture of funny/serious - we tried to getcha to let your guard down.
And yeah about the messaging system - the original idea was to have the computer be a fully interactable, fake operating system, but we couldn't really figure out a good way to implement that in the programming sooo... Yeah. I'm not happy with the solution we came up with, but I'm glad we at least got the story working.
And sound mixing was also cut for time - we'll try to improve that in an update. (there's a really funny easter egg sound effect during the section where Salmon is gaming, but it's unfortunately a little too quiet for most people to hear)
Wow!!! First of all, the sheer amount of content here - as well as it being a good 10-15 min complete story arc - is supremely impressive for the limited amount of time that you had. Genuinely fantastic job!
I loved the bear puns and theme - I think that the humor did a really great job of tackling the sometimes heavy topics that came up surrounding life, repetition, and love. I am not totally sure how I felt about certain parts of the story since (MINOR SPOILERS): I'm kind of tired of feeling like the female in the friendship is always responsible for reaching out and making things okay to the usually toxic male friend, but I'm willing to give it a pass here since the characters are all super endearing and this is just a small look into what seems to be a much bigger story.
I still really really enjoyed and appreciated the message at the end :) It is a very sweet story that left me feeling like I had to take on my day!
I LOVE the art. The mix of styles is super cute and cohesive. I also loved the choice of sound effects and music, although as someone else commented earlier, some of the initial roar sounds were mixed a bit loud and spooked me, hehe!
So yeah, huge props to the entire team! The game was super smooth and enjoyable. Lasted just long enough to feel like a proper game without the twist getting overBEARing (ohoho) and all of that. Really fantastic and I'm definitely going to recommend this to my friends! :)
Just wanted to add on - I think as well that you guys handled the relationship very well. I liked seeing well-rounded characters that had their perks and their flaws on both ends. It was very realistic and very charming!
Thank you for your kind comment! I'm really glad you enjoyed our game and that it made you feel something! We all worked super hard on it.
We were definitely trying to aim for a very realistic relationship - which was a fun juxtaposition to the fact that our characters were bears. 🐻
To your comment about the female friend being obligated to fix the relationship - I'm sorry it came off that way!! We were just trying to think of a story moment that would cause Salmon to have a sudden revelation, and we thought a letter from Bumble would be a sweet way to kickstart Salmon's revelation - not the thing that ultimately fixed everything. Bumble was never intended to be the "fixer", the idea was that Salmon realized he was being a bad friend. I hope that didn't taint your experience of the game too much! I appreciate you letting us know.
Oh and yeah. 😅 Volume mixing was def something we needed to do but ran out of time for.
Oh no, it did not taint my experience at all! I really loved the story and think that it was a good use of the mechanics you had in the constraint of time! :) Genuinely, y'all did a fantastic job and I appreciated the self-reflection that Salmon went through at the end. <3
That was an experience to read haha. I love the art and the UI looks so clean. I understand that it would've made the game a lot longer to create but if there were some player choice or interactions available that would elevate the game, even if it leads to nothing. But being able to explore the story and setting with my own agency would've made this a more memorable experience for me. I enjoyed the game, the puns and the little details such as the different fonts on bumble vs. letter. They were all nice touches that enhances the experience a lot.
Yeah, we definitely wanted to have player choice when were working on the ideas for the game, but we scrapped it because we thought it'd be too hard to implement. We tried to make the best we could with the time we had.
I'm glad you enjoyed it! We put a lot of work into it.
Man this game is long for a jam game! Impressive. It was super smooth and easy to navigate and the art was great. Really great work from the whole team. Only thing is that first roaring sound scared me with how loud it was, lol!
Credits go to Noah for the length! My man wrote a 19 page script for the game, in like two days.
Yeah I know the roar is loud lol I intended to fix that but I forgot
Hearing the chiptune lofi version of Ain't No Sunshine was very endearing, I really enjoyed that. The music choices overall are excellent. The story was very sweet and the art style meshed very well with it. I do wish it had choices for the players to make, and possibly make the computer an interactable object instead of simply having the game read what was happening to the player. Again, the charm of all the visuals, including the pixel and voxel art, along with the audio design, such as the music, played a huge role in making the game as appealing as it is now.
Yeah, I wish we had more time to make the computer interactable too. That was one of our ideas that got cut for time, along with choices and branching paths. I'm glad you liked it! I put a lot of work into the visuals.
The visuals were definitely a highlight! And having to cut ideas is very reasonable for a jam haha. Great work!
I absolutely love the cute art style and the humor is on point. I could not stop smiling while playing the first half, and almost cried playing the second! This easily has my vote for top 3.
The bear's roar sounds kind of like a chainsaw though!
I'm glad our game hit you in the feels! That's the greatest compliment you could have given us.
Bear Murry Lmao
This is a really fun chill game and the comedy is on point for me props for the writer
I know branching narrative is a bit much to ask from a Jam game but I wished I could make choices for sam if you can add that and get more story into it, it can really be a great visual novel
there's a game on steam called "The letter" it's a horror-themed visual novel maybe look into it if you want to make this into a full game for length and structure not story obviously :D
I love the game though you have my vote for the final 3 :)
Thank you so much!
Yeah, we originally intended the game to have branching options for how to apologize to Bumble - but that got cut bc of the limited time we had. I'm glad you found it funny!