Fat Bear WeekThe National Park Service’s celebration of the fattest bears around, got its own unofficial board game. Tabletop publisher Osprey Games announced the upcoming release Katmai: The Bears of Brooks Rivera two-player board game that takes direct inspiration from the emerging culture. You play as sand- or cinnamon-colored brown bears staking your claim to chunks of the Alaskan river in hopes that you will catch enough fish to get you out of your winter hibernation.
A bit of a departure from the high-performance, war-fighting games Osprey Games is known for, Katmai have players look at the world from a four-legged perspective. However, that doesn’t mean Osprey has left its strategic, competitive gameplay behind. While these bears seem friendly – each of them is represented by one of 24 cards with rectangular shapes, special abilities, and names like Flo, Marge, Milkshake and Headbob – they was fighting for control. As the fishing grounds along the Brooks River are settled, bears compete in a race to feed themselves and their cubs.
The game is not subtle about its real-life uses. Fat Bear Week takes place every October in Katmai National Park, an Alaskan preserve that is home to not only bears and salmon, but caribou, lynxes, wolves, and more. All the bears in the game are named after real life brown bears from Katmai National Park. Although most of the control sheet covers the game’s mechanics, the last six pages are devoted to teaching the players about Katmai, its animal inhabitants, and the workings of Katmai securitywhich has worked to fund research in the area and preserve its unique ecosystem since the park was established in the 1980s.
Katmai: The Bears of Brooks River, created by Peter Ridgeway with illustrations by Tom Lopez, is slated for release on February 27. You can pre-order the game now for $35 at Osprey Games website.
Board Games,Gaming,Tabletop Games
