Every year in October, the world comes together to celebrate one of the few truly universally beloved holidays: Fat Bear Week. Driven by their biological imperative to pack as much into their fat reserves as possible before hibernation sets in, the brown bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska (a nature preserve roughly the size of Connecticut) decimate the local salmon runs to help them survive the coming winter. And when they say Fat Bears, they mean it. These behemoths will eat 120 pounds of salmon a day, as tens of thousands of folks around the world look on in shock and awe through livestreams to vote in a tournament bracket for their favorite 1000+ pound contender. Fat Bear Week has everything a person could want: Drama, intrigue, scandal, and really really fat bears.
But if you’re itching to replicate the experience off-season, look no further than Katmai: The Bears of Brooks River, a game by Peter Ridgeway, illustrated by Tom Lopez. Capturing the pathos of the struggle for dominance and the ever-shifting social hierarchy of apex predators with names like Headbob and Scare D Bear, Katmai is a two-player card game that promises exciting gameplay at every turn.
Gameplay Overview:
Each player selects a team of Brown Bears: Sandy or Cinnamon. Both choices come with a deck of bear cards and a pack of bear meeples (which the rulebook calls Beeples). Bear cards have dominance scores on them based on how tough the bear is, and lower scoring bears also have special abilities. Players also receive salmon tokens and a bear cub token.
Seven double sided river tiles are arranged in a line between the two players, forming the board. These tiles are divided into four spaces, each of which has a fishing feature icon that interacts with the scoring objectives and bear abilities. Four of the 15 double sided objective cards are chosen to start off the game, depending on the difficulty level you want to play at.
Play starts by flipping the initiative token like a coin and calling ‘paw or nah’ instead of heads or tails. The player with the initiative token plays their cards first, but they can pass it to their opponent at will if they see a strategic advantage.
Each round, the teams play through their whole hand of cards, with two cards set aside facedown at the round’s beginning. Bear cards are played onto river tiles, and the player who has the highest scoring stack of bears on a tile, with a maximum of three bears per stack, gets to place a Beeple there at the end of the round. In the case of a tie, bear cards with the sow icon can choose to play a bear cub token to break it in their favor.
By strategically placing your Beeples along the river, you’ll be able to fulfill the patterns featured on the objective cards, earning you salmon. Play ends either when one team is down to only two bears to place or when one team ends a round with four more bears placed on the river than their opponent. The player with the most salmon tokens wins.
Game Experience:
Katmai is light, but it packs in a surprising amount of variability. The river tiles are double sided, flowing in two different directions. There are eight different sets of normal mode objectives, and a wider variety of combinations if you want a harder difficulty. These are unique enough from one another that different combinations will require new strategies every time you play. It might not be possible to accomplish them all, forcing you to do some probability odds as you play, betting against which objectives your opponent might be focusing on.
Blind drawing two bears to leave out lends unpredictability to the rounds, adding tension as you try to guess if your opponent still has their heavyweight bears, or if you can risk trying to capture a tile without sacrificing your own. The strategy isn’t particularly complex, and gameplay doesn’t present too many challenges, but there is room for decision making and trying to plan your turns. When you have a two-player game that you play over and over with the same person, it can suffer from repetition. The variability that Katmai packs into its lean contents means you can play an awful lot of it before the game starts to feel rote.
I was surprised by just how much we enjoyed Katmai. Two-player card games are one of my most owned categories, but something about Katmai felt especially delightful. The setup is simple, without taking up too much space. It can be played on a coffee table just as easily as a picnic table. It’s quick to learn and teach, without needing very much rule clarification, and the cards have a straightforward iconography that is easy to identify.
The power struggle among the bears along the river comes across in gameplay, and there’s a rewarding tension to the tug-of-war when both players need the same tile to complete an objective. Gameplay is not complicated or particularly innovative, but everything just works.
It may be petty, but what I do take issue with is the choice to use Beeple to describe the Bear Meeples. With as many bee themed games as there are already in the board game canon, this term has been effectively claimed. The ‘Paw or Naw’ initiative token flip rules complicate a simple coin toss and feels a little silly for an otherwise straight-laced nature game. The bear art is fierce, but the card backs look like something out of an Herbal Essences commercial. The whole rulebook seems to struggle with the balance of the whimsical anthropomorphization of the bears and the desire to stay scientifically true to their nature and conservation. The gameplay itself doesn’t suffer from this imbalance, but it does make the rulebook read a little oddly.
Final Thoughts:
Katmai is a game that the northernmost state can be proud of. I can see it being sold in gift shops at cruise ship ports and being played by the fire at campgrounds. It’s a great couple game that is quick to get on the table and easy to teach. While I think the rulebook had a bit of an identity crisis in terms of whimsy, it’s a great choice for someone looking for a light and lean two-player game.
Final Score: 3 Stars – Does a lot right, and will work well for casual players who are passionate about the theme
Hits:
• Lots of gameplay variability for such a small package
• Well designed card symbols with visually interesting art
• Interesting theme that integrates well with the gameplay
Misses:
• I just can’t accept “Beeples”
• Gameplay isn’t particularly challenging, and the strategy is shallow.
