When 10-year-old Amber discovers that her brother has gone missing, she goes on a search around Paper City to find him, with a little help from her gravel-voiced hard-boiled detective teddy bear friend.
This is Bear With Me, a new point-and-click adventure from Exordium Games.
In Bear With Me, Amber must gather clues, solve puzzles and interview other toys come-to-life in a black and white noir-like world. However, her search for her brother uncovers a deeper and darker mystery: there are a lot of weird things going on in Paper City, with rumors of a villain named Red Man who keeps setting things on fire.
"Bear With Me (pun intended!) is inspired by the great point-and-click classics like Monkey Island and Grim Fandango, that we we still remember dearly," the game's website states. "These games were played among generations, and although it's hard to plan such greatness for a game, Bear With Me seeks to bring you the same quirky humor, strange adventures and noir fun of familiar titles, set in a black and white 'horror' atmosphere."
Perhaps what makes Bear With Me stand out from other games is that, not only does it feature a talking detective teddy bear in a noir setting, but that teddy bear often likes to offer quips related to pop culture, including topics covering movies and other video games. He also likes to call Amber "doll" a lot, because that's what noir detectives do. Imagine Tex Murphy as a stuffed animal: that's Ted E. Bear.
The game will also require players to make decisions that could affect how Amber's mission plays out. Will she find her brother? Will she help stop the Red Man from burning down Paper City?
"Bear With Me offers a classic point-and-click adventure with a dose of self-awareness; it revels in the genre's trappings of absurd solutions and quirky characters and has a lot of fun with both," Exordium game director Andrej Kovacevic said in a press release. "We also hope players find something within Bear With Me's greater message that resonates and stays in their minds long after they finish playing."
Exordium also released a trailer for the game, which shows off the world that Amber will explore, as well as the nuanced character of Ted E. Bear.
"If I had a nickel for every time this broad got me into trouble," Ted E. Bear says as he narrates the trailer, setting the tone for the game.
Bear With Me will release for PC on Steam and the Humble store on Aug. 8.
