You play the role of an ordinary bear, living a regular ol' habitat... but wait a minute, winter's coming! Naturally, you'd have to get as much nutrients as you can before you hibernate - otherwise you'll have sleep deprivation and a freezing white day on top of that. But, there's only 5 minutes before winter begins... so how can you help the situation?
With a Cool Car, of course.
Grab as much fish and berries as you can before winter comes, as your ride fills up with rocks, pinecones and leaves. Avoid obstacles like bees, trees, and even Artificial Intelligence opponents (and probably a badger), and then find and enter a cave. See how many years you can last before the snow finally gets to you...
Enviro-Bear 2000: Operation: Hibernation is an indie game developed by Crackerblocks (Justin Smith). Needless to say, it's a bear driving simulator.
Yep. Seriously.
It was released on May 25th, 2009, and can be freely downloaded on GameJolt here
. Its Android port, Enviro-Bear 2010, can be found on the Google Play Store.
The tropers are restless!
- Artificial Intelligence: There are other bears driving identical cars driving around the forest, and can be crashed into as many times as the player pleases. Or rather, will be crashed into.
- Bears Are Bad News: Especially ones that can drive!
- Bee Afraid: Bees are minor hazards in the game, able to sting the bear and block his way.
- The Berserker: The badger drops into the bear's car and flails around violently, not stopping until it's thrown back out.
- Car Fu: The bear drives a car in such a way that it becomes less "trying to hibernate" and more "just hit everything in the forest and then hibernate".
- Drives Like Crazy: The bear is obviously...not very skilled at driving, with the car easily tipping over and even rolling over entirely. This does not harm the bear at all whatsoever.
- Endless Game: There's no real ending to the game - the objective is to simply last as many years as you can before you fail. Random events before each level add twists to the gameplay (the bear is skinny and needs more food, overfishing means having to eat berries, the bear's car is a turbo and can move faster, etc.).
- Gratuitous Latin: The name of the game's one song is La Libellula note .
- Fade to White: Played with. Once the timer runs out, snow will start falling before giant heaps of it fall into the bear's car, growing larger until the snow covers the entire screen.
- Hood Hornament: Starting in year 7, the bear's car gets deer antlers mounted on the hood. Fortunately they're not too intrusive to the player's view.
- Made of Iron: The bear, in spades: he can handle bee stings, badger attacks and his equally invincible car rolling around with not even a wince of pain or any hint of a lasting effect (though his hand shakes from bee stings anyway).
-
Nintendo Hard: Certain random events are tougher to make up for, such as overfishing meaning you have to rely on eating berries. Though, there's still a chance to drive through a pond and suddenly find lots of fish... or one so big it can't even fit inside your car. - Red Eyes, Take Warning: The badger has these, and there's a warning about him you should certainly take indeed!
- Retraux: The game's style is pixelated, able to give an NES or Atari feel to it. The music clearly sounds like a MIDI track, though most of the sound effects are realistic.
- Rule of Funny: The entire point of the game.
- Sanity Slippage: As the time runs out, the bear becomes increasingly more restless, roaring in rage with bloodshot eyes more and more frequently, complete with Stock Sound Effects.
- Timed Mission: The whole game is one, with the first few levels (years) each giving you 5 minutes, then 4, then 3. One of the random events is the bear sleeping in, subtracting 1 minute.
- Wacky Racing: Well, it's racing against time more than anything, but this game still fits this trope to an absolute T.
- With My Hands Tied: The bear drives, eats, and handles all possible items that may fall into his car with one hand, doing nothing whatsoever with the other (to the point where it's not seen in-game aside of his napping sprite shown on the title screen).
