Fat Bear Week comes super early this year with a board game adaptation

Fat Bear Week, the National Park Service’s official celebration of the fattest bears around, is getting its own unofficial board game. Tabletop publisher Osprey Games announced the upcoming release Katmai: The Bears of Brooks River, a two-player board game that takes direct inspiration from the cultural phenomenon. You play as sandy- or cinnamon-colored brown bears staking your claim to chunks of an Alaskan river in the hopes that you’ll catch enough salmon to get you through your winter hibernation.

A bit of a departure from the high-action, hardcore war games Osprey Games is known for, Katmai has players view the world from a four-legged perspective. However, that doesn’t mean Osprey has left its strategic, competitive gameplay behind. While these bears may seem friend-shaped — they’re each represented by one of 24 cards with furry illustrations, unique bear abilities, and names like Flo, Marge, Milkshake and Headbob — they’re fighting for dominance. As fishing spots along the Brooks River get occupied, bears compete in challenges to feed themselves and their cubs.

The game isn’t subtle about its real-life source material. Fat Bear Week takes place each 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. While most of the rulebook covers the game’s mechanics, the final six pages are dedicated to educating players about Katmai, its animal inhabitants, and the work of the Katmai Conservancy, which has worked to fund research on the region and preserve its unique ecosystem since the park’s founding in 1980.

Katmai: The Bears of Brooks River, designed by Peter Ridgeway with illustration by Tom Lopez, is slated for release on Feb. 27. You can pre-order the game now for $35 on the Osprey Games website.