The Bear Comes at Night
A downloadable game
The bear comes at night is a single player survival horror rpg based on a true story about being a person stuck in a cabin in the middle of the woods who is being attacked by a bear every night. Based on a true story.
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Played this game on my podcast, Alone at the Table! Definitely will be playing again.
Your gameplay went about as well as my playtesting. Thanks for making me fully lose my shit laughing in the airport, and thanks for playing my dumb game!
It was so fun! I was cracking up the whole time, the dice were very unkind to me. I did play more later and survived four nights before the bear ate me.
This game is gorgeous in its simplicity and theme.
Do you mind if people make games based off of this? And if so, do you have specific wording you'd like for crediting?
Go nuts. A simple sentence and a link pointing back to the itch.io page would be lovely. Godspeed.
Awesome, thank you very kindly for your response! I feel like there's a lot of stuff that can be done with this. :3
Hey, I did it <3
The Raptors Come at Night
extremely crispy, I love the claw design, and as someone who was haunted by nightmares about velociraptors after watching jurrasic park when I was 5 years old, it speaks to me. Well done.
I shared those same nightmares, my friend. I'm really glad you like it, thank you ☺️
I need to know what the story behind this is, and I hope it's not something too traumatic to repeat.
The Bear Comes At Night is a minimalistic survival horror ttrpg about being besieged by a bear in a remote cabin.
The PDF is atmospheric and expressive, and it does a great job with its limited space. Themes of bears and night are easily reflected in the layout, and the whole thing looks and feels satisfying.
The game's mechanics are simple, with you rolling a die against the bear. Roll higher, no consequences. Roll lower, the bear hurts you. And the bear's die is higher, so it's often going to hurt you.
There's a little bit of strategy you can do by opting to cross off items to get a bonus on your die roll, but otherwise it's a grueling, arduous affair. The bear attacks over and over again until you die or luck out and get rescued by helicopter.
Overall, this might be one of my favorite one page rpgs. It does so much with so little. There's no directions to journal your experiences, but the game creates a very tense and atmospheric narrative seemingly without trying. The premise is also just grounded enough to feel viscerally compelling, even if this kind of systematic bear attack doesn't exactly happen often.
I'd absolutely recommend you check this out if you get the chance. It's a solo game, but with a few modifications it could be grafted onto another system or adapted for group play.
Minor Issues:
-"a helicopter comes during the and" I think 'during the' is extraneous
-When you cross out an item to add a d6 against the bear, is it added to your total, or rolled separately? Either one feels like it would make sense.