(After T-Zero, I was looking for something light and easy. This game was among the very first IFs I ever laid eyes on. I didn’t finish it then (2004) because I did not have any puzzle-skills yet. I’m glad I gave it another go. This game did very well in both IFComp and the XYZZY Awards in 1997. Deservedly so, in my opinion.
A Bear’s Night Out - Details (ifdb.org))
Fluffy adventure.
A Bear’s Night Out is a delightful little adventure!
After dark, while your owner is asleep, you climb (or rather bounce) out of bed. You have to make sure everything is ready for the big day tomorrow, and knowing your owner, he’ll have forgotten a bunch of stuff.
The map is very small, eleven rooms in total. While exploring these rooms, there are tons of fun stuff to discover and experiment with. (Pssst, the cat is a great playmate…)
Once you have seen all the rooms, experimented to your hearts content with all the funny stuff and start dealing with the puzzles in earnest, you’ll see that not everything in this game is fluffy and soft and easygoing. None of the puzzles are fiendish, but they all require thorough examining of the game-space, a good deal of planning and some real-life puzzlesolving strategies. Of course, all of this is made both harder and more fun by the fact that you’re about a foot tall…
A warm and fluffy adventure.
Dyte did a great job employing juuuuust enough subtle sarcasm to balance out the fluffiness, which I think prevents the game from descending into saccharine territory.