Punch Bears

Life can be very boring and depressing if you really think about it. Mundane tasks seem to pile up and many people question what the meaning of life is, without ever getting the answer. To combat this repetitive nature of our everyday life, many do engage in a roleplay because after all, can you honestly say that for a little bit in your life, you never wished you'd live an entirely another sort of a life?



Plot

This one is really tough one, so let me take a deep breath and try and explain it.

The game tells a story about Ulrika, a woman who's days are very unfulfilling and sad, her stating how her days suck. However, while her normal life sucks, in her dreams she's a mighty woman, able to literally kill a mighty Grizzly with a single punch! She's simply said, invincible and unable to be hurt even by the mightiest beasts, able to do whatever she wants and take out her stress on mighty bears.

author=Ulrika
Punching bears is very relaxing.

Ulrika's fantasy is all in her head and it's acknowledged from the very start, it is not a huge twist at the end that is was all a dream in her head like most games of its nature. No, instead the way how she handles the whole it being dream is what really makes the game stand out, she embraces this as moment of being able to be this amazing avatar of bear punchery as her only thing that is exciting in her life. The only thing that keeps her going.

The whole game takes place only in one single confined room, with no escape or end in sight with the only thing you able to do is contemplate on your life or punch bears. In many games, this would make Ulrika a huge tormented soul with tragic past and while this may or may not be true, the game never shoves it in your face and lets the player draw their own conclusions.



In the end honestly, Ulrika seems to go a bit of insane and does in fact not be able to cope that she has to wake, wanting more bears when there is no longer even bears to punch. It's a stirring statement of being so lost in a fantasy that one can no longer even cope with a reality when it dawns upon us.

Something a bit disturbing is that Ulrika seems to break away from her insanity when she's being asked nicely, as if all this time all she really wanted was someone to just be kind to her.

Gameplay

The gameplay mostly consists of utilizing the regular battle system with several minor tweaks to it, such as how Ulrika says random things before the fighting new set of bears. It's much appreciated but there could be more lines added, as there's just four so chances of one repeating several times is somewhat high. Even boosting it to just seven or so would cause more variety.

Speaking of variety, aside the final boss and the bonus round, there are only one type of bears; grizzlies. While Grizzlies are known for their ferocity and such, I just can't but wonder why couldn't there be included other sorts of bears, Pandas, heck Polar Bears? Even if they would be the same monster but just different graphics would help spruce up the combat since it's such a big part of the game and the main focus of the game.

The gameplay mostly as it is now consists of fighting a random number of bears whenever you're ready, you take a short break and then you fight another random order of bears. The only real difference are the final boss and the secret "Magical Bears" bonus round but mostly the purpose of this game is to punch bears a lot, much like the game's name would suggest. You can pretty much kill bears with one move and can hit all bears at the same time with a special skill, too bad there's only two bears on screen at the time due to their size so it gives a somewhat weird "pop in" effect and so you cannot hit more than two at the same time. Four or even three at once could have been a better choice but maybe this was actually done on purpose to avoid using the special skill to literally end the combat too soon?


Something that could be added to add in? Bear counter, which counts how many bears have been beaten in game. Not only would it be fun to see, it could actually inspire someone to play just a bit more to see it go bigger, just to punch two more bears out. Never understimate the power of being able to see numbers grow bigger by doing reduntantry tasks, just look at cookie clicker and how big that got witht extremely basic and reduntatry task.

Presentation

Graphically speaking, the charasets and the tilesets are RTP but everything else is not, Ulrika herself has a very good faceset and his only human friend in the world Ralph has also good emotionset as well as his final form. The room you play in is not bad looking room actually and does make good use of RTP to its effect.

Music and audio is all done in a RTP and it does its job, it doesn't stand out but at least the songs are actually quite fitting for what they're trying to do and that is to get you in the mood of punch bears. The game runs without adding RTP, which is always a positive and helps reach bigger audiences.

Extra

While obviously meant as a joke, this game actually raises much more provocative and thought rising questions that not many pseudo intellect and supposedly serious games could ever hope to achieve. It takes a look at one girl's fantasy, as silly as it may be for you, it is clearly the only thing as witnessed throughout the game that keeps her going. In fact, she even states that she does this to ease many pains and has done for very long and will most likely continue to do so in future, as it's her way of coping with her sanity.

author=Ulrika
I will continue to punch bears for as long as I want.

Is Ulrika insane or has she just learnt a way to relieve the stress of her everyday life and just doing what she likes to do, without actually even hurting anyone since the bears themselves are also part of her imagination? Can we fault her for wanting to be different, even if it is just in her imagination and never fulfilled in real life ? Maybe this is for the best and should never be actually fulfilled, since she most likely would be killed in real life if she were to punch a bear?

Final thoughts

While not a game in the traditional sense as it involves very little gameplay aside the forementioned Bear punching which to some may get repetitive, the game does actually provide you not only with what it promises (You get to punch bears) but leaves something for you to think about after all is said and done and I can applaud any game, as simple as they can be that can do so. And there is one thing that really nails this whole fantasy thing down.

You never see Ulrika's normal everyday life and it is in fact never even mentioned. She could be in asylumn or she could be the president. For all we know, she could be a lonely man stuck on a deadend job and with wife he no longer loves or a woman who is struggling everyday. Everything is left up in the air as in the end she returns to reality but even then it's acknowledged that she will return and most likely, very soon and the only thing we are told of the reality is that she wants to return back to her fantasy. Ulrika is a tortured, sad soul but we never dwell on the sadness because that would not make for an entertaining game to hear someone mope about their sadness and learning to love again or some stupidness like that like in majority of rpgs you can play.

In fact as a final food for thought and letting you draw the comparisions in your mind, the maker himself mentions in the dev blog that he wanted to create something to get his stress off and feel good about doing something really amazing such as being able to punch bears and kill them with barefists.



Maybe there is a bit of a Bear Basher in all of us.