Just like Camping, these games are "in tents."

Camping.  We've all done it at one time or another.  Whether it's sitting around a campfire telling ghost stories and eating s'mores in your backyard, or whatever these guys are doing...

we have all had that glorious feeling of being at one with nature.  Interestingly enough, in recent months several games have hit my personal radar with some aspect of camping as a theme.  This time, we are going to take a quick look at three of them: Scavengers, Let's Take A Hike, and Bears!

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Ok, ok... hiking isn't camping.  I know, but one sometimes leads to the other, so I'm lumping this in.  Let's Take a Hike is a push your luck style card game in the vein of Cloud 9, Diamant, and Incan Gold.  2 to 5 players will be dealt a hand of cards.  The goal of the game is to score as many points as possible on a series of hikes.

These cards depict items you may want to bring along for a long hike such as a sleeping bag, socks, flashlights etc.  On your turn, you will be placing these items into an invisible backpack which resides on the table in front of you.  Each card has a small icon which shows you exactly where they can go in your pack.  After a few turns, someone will declare they want to go for a hike.  Each other player determines if they want to go along.  

At this point, the lead hiker (the player that started the hike) will flip over a card from the deck. If any of the hikers has that exact card in their pack, they are fine.  If a hiker does not have that card, they must discard a card showing the number of boot prints on the flipped card.  At this point, hikers decide whether they are dropping out of the hike, or carrying on.  If a hiker drops, they get to take a card from the flipped stack as a prize.  If the hike gets to a point where there is just one hiker left, when that hiker drops out, he or she gets all remaining cards in the prize pile.  Be careful though!  If you are ever caught without the ability to discard enough boot icons, or are hit by a hazard you cannot deal with, you are sent home with NOTHING!  The winner is the person with the most boot prints in their prize pile when the card deck is exhausted.

Of the three games I'm reviewing here, this one is my favorite.  I think building the pack generates a few interesting choices (although picking the right items mainly comes down to luck).  I especially love the artwork on the cards. The art has a retro style to it that I find extremely charming.  Let's Take a Hike is a cute game that kids of all ages should find enjoyable.

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So, you've hiked all the way to the campsite, you've put the tent up, and suddenly the growl of a bear rises up behind you.  What do you do?  You can run, you can pull out your gun and shoot the bear, or you can just ignore the whole thing and sleep through the attack in your tent.  Those are the choices available to you in this fast paced dice game.

Each player is given five black player dice.  Each of these dice contain icons of a gun, a running person, or a sleeping person.  In the center of the table are a set of white "camp" dice.  There are five of these dice for each player as well.  Each of these dice have just two icons, bears and tents.  When players are ready, all of the camp dice are rolled.  At this point the players roll their dice, and the fun begins!  Players are quickly trying to match up their player dice with camp dice in an effort to score points.  

There are only three legal pairs that can be made in the game.  First, players can match a gun and a bear for 1 point.  Second, you can flee the scene by matching a tent and a runner die...this nets you 2 points.  Or, you can be brave (stupid) and match a tent with a sleeping bag.  If you make this match, and all of the bears that were rolled are taken down, you score a whopping 5 points.  However, if you try to sleep through the attack, and the round ends with even 1 bear alive...you lose 2 points.  Players are allowed to re-roll their player dice as many times as they want, but the round ends immediately once either all the bears or all the tents are gone from the camp dice pool.  As the rules are written, the first player to 100 points wins.

I put that last line in because, though fun, Bears is a game I need to play in smaller doses. I tend to play games to 50 points.  I don't do this because I dislike the game, but simply because speed games fluster me, and I don't enjoy that feeling for longer than a few minutes.  I'm sure there are people out there willing to play this game to 500 points, and are grandly disappointed when someone hits that goal.  I'm not one of those people.  

I want to lodge one complaint against Bears!  It's minor, almost to the point of being silly.  But when I bought the game, I assumed, based on the size and shape of the box, that there was a dice cup included.  It's not necessary, I mean, the box lid is close enough that I use it to roll all the camp dice.  I just felt a little let down when I opened the box, and there was no dice cup.