How We Designed a Bear AI That Makes Players Hearts Race

Introduction: Why Bears Are the Perfect Horror Element

In 2025, Japan experienced frequent bear attack incidents. These real-world horror news stories became the inspiration for creating Bear Doom.

Many people have a strange misconception about bears—they think bears are cute, slow, and won’t actively attack humans. But the truth is completely opposite. An adult brown bear can reach speeds of 50 km/h, faster than Olympic sprinters. They possess incredible strength and can crush a human skull with a single swipe.

Through Bear Doom, we wanted players to personally experience the terror of being chased by a bear. Not through text or news reports, but by having you stand on the Eternal Night Grassland yourself, hearing the footsteps getting closer and closer behind you.

AI Design Philosophy

The Fear of “Always Following You”

Bear Doom’s bear AI has one core design principle: it will always follow you.

This is the most terrifying part of the game. Unlike enemies in other horror games that have patrol routes or blind spots, our bear always knows where you are. You can’t hide, you can only keep running and keep looking for a way out.

But we also designed some items to help players: salmon and stones can distract the bear—but be careful, it doesn’t work every time! The bear isn’t stupid; it might see through your tricks.

Speed Pressure

The bear is faster than the player. This is a cruel but realistic setting.

Players can’t escape through pure running; they must use items wisely, upgrade abilities, or find clever routes. This creates a constant tension—you know you can’t outrun it, but you must find a way to survive.

Of course, we also gave players the ultimate weapon: a gun. As humanity’s ultimate tool, it can give you a fighting chance. But ammunition is limited, so you must use it carefully.

Why the Bear Gets a “Permanent 10% Speed Boost”

This is Bear Doom’s most unique and cruel mechanic.

When players get stronger, the bear becomes less scary. To maintain the game’s tension, we designed this mechanic: every time you successfully escape (Ending A), the bear’s speed permanently increases by 10%.

This gives players a hidden pressure: you must unlock the true ending before the bear becomes too fast. Repeatedly getting Ending A only makes the game harder and harder.

Players can discover this mechanic by collecting the item “Proof of Looping”. The name itself is a hint—you’re looping endlessly, and with each loop, the threat increases.

As for the upper limit? There is no upper limit. The bear can become faster than you can imagine.

Near-Death Mini Game: The Last Hope

You might ask: if the bear is this strong, aren’t players doomed to die?

Not entirely. We designed a “last hope” mechanic: when you’re about to be killed by the bear, a Mini Game triggers.

This Mini Game combines QTE (Quick Time Events) and math calculations. Yes, you read that right—math calculations.

As a game full of Asian humor, we added some simple math problems. We believe everyone should be able to solve them…right? 😂

Successfully complete the Mini Game, and you can survive to keep running. Fail, and…you know what happens.

Development Stories

The “Butt Attack” Bug

In early development, we encountered a hilarious bug: the bear’s attack hitbox malfunctioned, causing the bear to attack players with its butt.

Watching a giant bear turn around and knock players away with its rear end made us laugh all afternoon. Although this bug was quickly fixed, it became a classic team joke.

Speed Setting Mistake

Another interesting bug was when we set the bear’s speed too fast—so fast it couldn’t actually catch players.

Wait, shouldn’t that make it harder? No, because the bear ran so fast it would overshoot the player’s position, then take a long time to turn around. As a result, players could just stand still and the bear would keep running circles around them.

Accidental JoJo Tribute

We designed a skill system that accidentally turned out perfectly suited for recreating classic scenes from my favorite anime, “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure”. This was completely unintentional, but we decided to keep this “feature”.

Player Testing Stories

I gave the game demo to my girlfriend to test. She had never played a first-person game before.

She got so scared she turned off the sound effects.

But what surprised me most was: even with the sound off, she still played to the end and said she enjoyed the game. This convinced us that Bear Doom’s core horror doesn’t just come from sound effects—it comes from the game mechanics themselves.

Screenshots / GIFs

Conclusion: Lessons on Designing Horror Game AI

What’s most important when designing a good horror game AI?

Sound effects, story—everything is important.

But if I had to give other developers one piece of advice, I’d say:

“Think is cheap, action is gold.” Ideas are worthless; action is golden.

You can spend countless hours discussing “what the perfect horror game AI should look like,” but only when you actually start building, testing, and watching player reactions will you know what works.

Bear Doom’s bear AI went through countless iterations. From the butt-attacking bug to the final version that scared my girlfriend into turning off the sound, every failure brought us closer to our goal.

So stop overthinking and start doing.