The Meeple’s Eye View is an in depth review of one of the many games in our board game library.
Bears are invading your campsite! What do you do? Will you grab a weapon and fight back? Will you dive into a tent? Make your choices and hope that you score more points than your opponents. Be the camper that gets to 50 points first and you are the winner!
Theme: Camping, Bears
Number of Players: 2-4
Game Time: 20-30 minutes
Age Appropriateness: 8 and up
Game Type: Bears is a dice rolling, pair matching, speed game
Game Play: Each player has their own set of camper dice which feature shotguns, runners and sleepers. There is a set of community campsite dice that feature Bears and tents.
The community dice are rolled in the middle of the table and the round begins. Players roll their camper dice and make pairs with the community dice. When there is just one type of die face left on the campsite dice (either all Bears or all tents) the round stops immediately with a call of “Bears!”
A pairing of shotgun/Bear gives you one point. A pairing of a runner and a tent is worth two points. Sleepers and tents are a gamble. If there are just tents left on the table when the round stops, your sleepers have successfully avoided the bears and you get five points per sleeper/tent match. If there are only Bears left, that same combo is worth negative points.
Players add their points and the next round begins. The first to 50 points is the winner.
Component Quality: The dice in the game are great quality. Fireside Games was smart to make the campsite dice a white background and the camper dice a black background so you can quickly glance and tell what kind of dice are which.
My Take: This is a fun filler. The best part of this game is that really all ages can play. My daughter loves it. Make no mistake, this is absolutely a speed game. That is unfortunate for me, as I never seem to do well with those kinds of games. If you are looking for a relaxed, sit back and enjoy game, this isn’t it. This is an edge-of-your seat, 45 seconds of panic at a time game. Great for short attention spans.
I will say that this game is definitely best with 3 or 4 players. Not remotely the first filler I would pull out with just 2 players.
Expansions and Replay-ability: There is an expansion called Bears Trail Mix’d which I have never played or much less seen. It adds or changes rules for pairings before the start of each round. Sounds like it may be worth a look to give the game a little more replay-ability.
Rick Grayshock is a husband and father and a co-founder of the Cleveland sports website WaitingForNextYear.com. Rick is excited to contribute to Meeple Moments and to write about his ‘other’ favorite hobby.