Video Game / A Bear's Night Out

Some nights, when people are fast asleep, teddy bears are just waking up.
And some nights, those teddy bears make mischief.
And some nights, things somehow turn out for the best...

A Bear's Night Out is a 1997 Interactive Fiction game by David Dyte.

You play as a teddy bear, exploring your owner's house during the night and making preparations so he can take you to the Teddy Bear Picnic tomorrow.

Play it here.

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Contains examples of:

• Added Alliterative Appeal: Tasks completed in the score breakdown are described alliteratively.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The inventory system takes after Curses, swapping items between your paws and your pockets as needed.
• Author Avatar: David, your sleeping owner, is also the author of the game.
• Developer's Foresight: In Curses, you can get a game over on the first move by exiting the attic. If you try to do this in the Game Within a Game, it will make note of this, saying that despite this appalling error, you still manage to finish the game.
• Game Within a Game: You can play games on the computer. Well, you can start a game — after making any move, it will just tell you how you successfully play through and complete the game.
• Hint System: It gives you progressively bigger hints to problems.
• Living Toys: You play as an animate teddy bear.
• Pun: If you try to remove your night shirt:
  Why change the habit of a lifetime?

  "Habit" is used both in the sense of "tendency" and its older sense of "attire".

• Shout-Out:
  • To the song "Teddy Bears' Picnic", of course.
  • The game disks that can be found and played are Curses, Dungeon, and Adventureland.
  • The TV commercial references Zork, A Change in the Weather, and Colossal Cave.
  • Searching the pile of papers in the study can yield some references to other games: e.g. a tourist map of Paris, a thing David's aunt gave him that he doesn't know what it is, a police dossier on Carmen Sandiego, a blueprint for the Chron-O-John, a map of Rockvil, South Dakota, a scroll labeled 'FROTZ', a soup can labelled with the letter 'Y', an application form for Stellar Patrol, a poster of Commander Borf, and a walkthrough for the game Freefall
  • The stamp is a tribute to Don Woods, one of the creators of Colossal Cave.
• Time Capsule: One can be found from 1982.
• Video Game Caring Potential: You can pet Holly the cat, which will net you a point for "kindness to kittens" the first time you do it. In fact, it serves a practical purpose in making her fall asleep.

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