After seeing the trailer for LumbearJack, a game by Finalboss Studios, during the Wholesome Games Direct earlier this summer, I knew I needed to check it out. There was something refreshing about what it was portraying: not mere incremental “rewilding,” or the reclamation by nature of spaces typically occupied by humankind, but explicit destruction of property, sabotage, and maybe even a radical restructuring of society. This is a lot for any media object to promise, much less a game, so part of my interest in LumbearJack was rooted in skepticism. It felt too good to be true.
The long and short of it: it was too good to be true, but not for a lack of trying.
Throughout the game, you play as a brown bear with an upgradable hatchet—the titular Jack. In a similar fashion to games like Donut County, you start off by destroying small objects: cars, dumpsters, signs, waste containers. As you gather more recyclable materials from the carnage, two things happen: first, the area you clean up is instantly reclaimed; and second, you get better and better axes with which to destroy bigger objects, like buildings and heavy machinery. Occasionally, you trade your axe in for a golf club (with which to smack rolling bombs) or a badminton racket (to beat back cannonfire), depending on the level. Once you reach the final upgrade level, you can destroy the main setpiece item causing most of the area’s pollution.
Each area has three objectives: completely clean the level up, smack the absolute shit out of any humans you find, and disable the level’s hidden bear trap. Meeting these goals is trivially easy, but you can goozle yourself if, for instance, you leave any man-made nonsense behind and then accidentally eliminate the path to get to it. The reward for being a completionist is new clothes for Jack. There’s the classic lumbearjack flannel, a pirate costume, some chef’s whites, a hockey jersey and even a business suit for when Jack has an 11:00 standup after his spate of destruction.
But wait, did you say you slap humans you meet?
Well, yeah. The game wants to be clear with its messaging that there should be consequences for people who participate in environmental destruction, but since this is a cutesy, cartoonish, mostly-made-for-kids game, you couldn’t have a fuckin’ brown bear chop up some garbage siphoner with a battle axe. Instead you slap them into next Tuesday, you slap them out of their job with Evil Works (that’s… literally the name of the enemy corp, I wish I was kidding), you slap them so fucking hard that they become hipsters. Maybe it’s a fate worse than death, but it’s a lot more presentable to an all-ages audience than, uh, a beheading.
As you clean up the woods, you get closer and closer to the Big City where Evil Works is based. The puzzles gradually get more difficult; there is a rough order to which objects need to be broken first and it isn’t always immediately apparent. Evil Works’s reaction to our revolutionary antics becomes more pronounced. At one point, we’re walking over a bridge into the city and a fucking tank shows up to blow our asses sky-high. They take out the bridge and inadvertently (and comedically) take themselves out in the process, but it’s pleasantly wild to me that the devs went with this more-or-less accurate portrayal of how far the corporate state would go (and has gone) to stop an effective environmental movement.
LumbearJack is a mildly pleasant time, all told. Even though I found myself laughing a little at some of the scenes’ ridiculousness (like the suggestion that a carefully manicured park was the ideal end-state of tearing down a fast food restaurant), the game is nice to play and not at all unclear on its stance, something I appreciate. Until the very end.
Now this is more of a logical end-state of the game’s necessarily non-violent stance (and property destruction is not violent, I won’t be taking questions on this), but probably the least… convincing moment of LumbearJack is right at the end, when the Evil Works CEO is defeated. Jack characteristically slaps the utter tarnation out of the guy, and he becomes… a Theme Park Dad. And he and the bear high-five. And they become friends. And they watch the sunset together.
I’d say this reeks of liberalism but not even liberals would want to have a picnic with the ex-CEO of Exxon-Mobil or Chevron in the aftermath of a green revolution, no matter how non-violent they are. That being said, a lot of specifically-geared-toward-children entertainment has this same message: everyone can be redeemed, no matter how horrible they were in their capacity as a villain. I just hoped that Finalboss would take that extra bold step here and lay claim to a necessary idea that people don’t have to be forgiven, even if you exit a conflict peacefully. It would have been a genuinely interesting subversion in a game that is so bold about every other radical idea it holds here.
After all that, LumbearJack is still very much a piece of climate change polemic that remains hopeful for – and mostly realistic about – the future. It is a game you could play with your kids alongside a bedtime reading of Andreas Malm’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline, maybe.
