Bearly Brave Review – Creative Yet Punishing Bear Gauntlet

Bearly Brave is a roguelike deckbuilder developed and published by Barbaric Games. You are a toy named Toby who has been recently delivered to a toy store and placed on a shelf. However, the toys come alive and you discover there’s a hierarchy as every toy is fighting to be on the shelf. You must battle several opponents using a variety of cards as weapons. Each opponent poses a unique challenge that changes with every run, forcing you to plan and adapt in advance.

Despite the tough premise, Bearly Brave retains some cutesy charm. At worst, you are beating the literal stuffing out of your opponents. Even if you hit a toy hard enough for them to burst, they fully recover for the next run. This also applies to Toby; even failure means getting sewn back up and trying again. You may be constantly fighting for visibility on the toy shelf but you are never at big risk. The core of the game is toys fighting each other, then fixing themselves to do it again.

You start with a basic deck that gives you a decent mix of weapon and skill cards. Some cards have a brand represented by a shape like a green triangle or a blue square. Placing cards with the same brand together provides different effects in combat. After defeating every opponent, you visit a store where you can spend money to get new cards. You can also purchase Patches, items that affect your damage multiplier or boost card effects.

Bearly Brave’s opponents are unique enough to encourage experimentation with different card combinations. It’s a difficult game that forces you to use every card and effect available to you. The challenge nurtures your desire to try again after you fail, finding the right combination that helps you prevail. You unlock new decks, Patches, and cards as you continue to play that bolster your existing strategies or reveal new ones.

Everything you encounter can be useful in some way and you are encouraged to use them. For example, consumable candies aren’t meant to be hoarded for boss fights. Many of them are useful for regular battles and saving them hinders your progress. Bearly Brave discourages hoarding or slow plays as your enemies hit hard and fast. If you aren’t using every tool available to you, it is likely you won’t get very far.

Healing options are sparse and changing strategies is difficult, making Bearly Brave a bigger challenge than normal. As you proceed through the story, enemies become significantly tougher and inconvenience you in greater ways. Hoping that your strategy works as intended is a common occurrence, along with learning which Patches help you the most. You are meant to forge your deck on the backs of your former losses to make victory even sweeter.

However, that great difficulty has two large concerns. The first is that few decks are actually viable since your opponents’ health largely outpaces your damage. While it’s fun to experiment with different card combinations, many won’t help you proceed through the game. Even the decks that you unlock quickly fall behind and you must use one of the few viable combinations. This hampers the fun of deckbuilding when you realize that most deck ideas won’t remain feasible.

The second concern is that viable decks often require specific requirements and cards to function. While that’s not unusual for a deckbuilder, missing a single component leads to an early end. If certain cards don’t appear in the store or an upgrade fails to materialize, your deck idea becomes unviable. Substituting with different cards, candy, or Patches rarely works, forcing you to restart early for time-saving purposes.

Both concerns lead to frustration and fatigue as the failures begin to mount. Enemy health and damage constantly grow at rates that aren’t easy to adapt to. Your strategies and desired decks are hampered by randomness, hindering your efforts. It’s not impossible to overcome and the challenge is genuinely worth overcoming. But this isn’t a casual roguelike that eases your stress after a long day. This is a game that requires the right pieces falling into their proper places before you taste true victory.

Powerful opponents with different strengths force you to innovate and investigate the strength of different cards. You also get a variety of decks to investigate, giving you different starting advantages. Unfortunately, Bearly Brave’s difficulty forces you into certain builds that hampers the innovation. It’s enjoyable, but be prepared to dedicate lots of time finding the right combination of factors to win.

Victor reviewed Bearly Brave on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and our score will not be changed.