Beat your opponents at the Unbearable Games, either by being more skillful … or changing the sport being played altogether.
What do I need?
Three simple steps.
- Read the short playful rules.
- Click Download > Files > "1 - Base Set.pdf"
- Print, cut, play!
Want more? You can also generate your own material right on this website! Or pick one of the other PDFs available in the Download section.
Unbearable Games
Welcome to the Unbearable Games! Where the rules change every second and bears are sure to ruin everything.
On your turn, you try to play a set of animals that beats the previous one.
And as we all know, there are two ways to win any sport.
- You play better than your opponent ( = higher numbers)
- You change the rules ( = different most occurring animal)
If you can’t or don’t want to, you must give away cards.
But bears … have several special powers that can either hand you victory or destroy all your plans.
It’s your goal to win so hard that nobody can do the two things above. Have fun!
Material
Pick your desired settings and press the button! (A new page will open.) When in doubt, just use the defaults for your first game(s).
Animals
(Click to fold.)Expansion Animals
(Click to fold.)Not working? Or unsure what to do? The "Download" button above has PDFs I already made for you! Pick any one of those.
Help! What do I need? For most player counts, the default values (1 bear + 4 animals) are fine. With more players, you can add the other animals. If you’re up for a bigger challenge, add expansion animals (one at a time).
Credits
The fonts used are Sloval (headings) and Ciscopic (body), both freely available (for commercial use). The website and rules use Merriweather, as that is more readable for longer paragraphs.
Many images were generated with AI (after careful research to make sure there was no copyright infringement). Though most were edited afterwards, because it’s not smart enough to understand how an animal could play any sport.
Everything else (game design, code, icons, general graphics, etcetera) is entirely mine.
This game started with the idea “what if there was a card game in which you sometimes want other people to hold onto a card of yours for a while?” In other words, a certain card is sometimes really powerful, but you can’t win while you have it.
I combined this with some other ideas, such as the simple game loop of “on your turn, play a valid move OR give away cards”. And of course a bad pun on “Hold my Beer!”
Until I ended up with this simple game that has surprising depth.