Beer-lympics
ROLE
Designer
TYPE
Event / Experience
DESCRIPTION
In the spirit of the Olympic Games and summer events in general, having a series of challenges, some being typical party games and other with some clever twists around drinking proved to be a fun way to bring people together! An 8 event structure, with varying numbers of participants and skills needed created a diverse experience for the Players.
Participants
30
Duration
4 Hours
Game Design Elements
Medal System
Event Design
Event Structure
Location
Apartment
Resources
BACKGROUND
A friend actually started this idea by saying they wanted to host a Beerlympics which immediately jump started my brain of what it could entail. She ended up just wanting to have a Beer Pong tournament so I had a couple of years to think about it until the next Olympics where a different friend wanted to host a Beerlympics and wanted more than 1 event and it was finally an opportunity to grow the seed that had been planted 2 years prior.
I wanted to have multiple events within the Beerlympics and I wanted them to use different types of “athleticism”, much like the Olympics do. I did a bunch of research on drinking games and came up with a list of events to review with my friend who was hosting the Beerlympics. We were going to have teams with a max team size of 6 and anywhere from 8-10 teams. As far as winning goes, we wanted to have Medals for the events but wanted an overall trophy for the best team as well.
Design Challenges
Unknown Final Location
While we had a few ideas of where we could hold this event, I had to keep in mind that we might be in a limited space. We put together a list of material minimums regardless of space, and cut back on a few events or revised their mechanics to account for if we had a smaller space. We ended up just having it at someone’s home where we had a planning meeting to sort of stage out where things would be and how we would set them up.
No Final Team Count (Bracket Hell)
With some of the events, I knew we would need a bracket to determine the medals. I worked on a couple versions for a couple different numbers of teams and after working for about an hour on just 4 options, I knew we needed to minimize the number of brackets involved because we had no idea what the final quantity of teams would be. We ended up with a maximum of eight teams, with good knowledge it would be the case, with a single elimination bracket and a double elimination bracket. The morning of the event we had 2 teams drop out which didn’t help matters much, but brackets with unknown quantities is quite difficult. I needed to limit team vs team, round-based events.
Not All Drinking Games
If every game was solely a drinking game, it would really just be to see who could drink the most. Also there were people who don’t drink included and I wanted to make sure everyone could participate and have fun. I needed some games to not require drinking, but adding an optional piece of complicating gameplay if you so choose.
OVERALL DESIGN
My goal in creating multiple events was to test different capabilities of players and have the teams choose who participates for each event. With the goal for the team to win as many events as possible creating competition, in them choosing who does which event it created an inter-team communication that would allow for deeper strategy. With the events all being a little different, players needed to decide which they thought they would be better at than others. This made not everything the same sort of contest and where people could let their skills shine by their own choice.
Having created some of the events using a conglomeration of versions I found of similar games, I needed a way to show the players what the events were. This would not only allow them to strategize but for everyone to have a common understanding of the events and their rules. I ended up making a Team Booklet to give to each team so they could scan through all the events and their order. We also gave them all a “Type” to help show people what sort of skill would be tested.
With the order of the events I also planned to start the ones that take the longest sooner and have them run at the same time as some of the shorter, quicker events. I also had an event that we needed materials for so we needed to have it later on account of amassing cans from the other events.
The host wanted to have a singular winning team so we came up with a scoring system on how to determine a winner after the events were concluded. We ended up with 8 events that took place over the course of about 3.5 hours, with 6 teams to start the event and only lost 1 team during the event.
Scoring System
Each event would have a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. Based on the placement in the event, points would be earned for the team. 1 point for 3rd, 3 points for 2nd, and 5 points for 1st. At the end of the Beerlympics, the team with the most points would walk away with the trophy!
Events
Title | Event Type | Participants Per Team | Competition Type |
|---|---|---|---|
Beer Relay | Teamwork | Full Team | Race |
Quarters | Dexterity | 1 | Elimination |
Tower Build | Engineering | 2 | Race |
Stein Holding Contest | Endurance | 1 | Elimination |
Ride The Bus | Card-Counting | 1 | Race |
Beer Balance Contest | Balance | 1 | Elimination |
Beer Pong | Precision | 2 | Bracket |
Flip Cup | Agility | Full Team | Bracket |
​
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Flip Cup - Classic Game, medals determined by Double Elimination Bracket due to speed of the game.
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Beer Pong - Classic Game but gave house-rule setting to the players, medals determined by Single Elimination Bracket
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Balancing Act - One player from each team would balance a cup ¾ of water on their head; last 3 standing medal.
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Ride the Bus - Shrunken down version of a drinking game with many version, One player from each team would pass through 5 “checkpoints” of guessing something about the next card to be flipped from a deck of cards, medals were first 3 to finish.
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Cup Holder - One person from each team would hold 2 Beer Steins full of water directly out in front of them for as long as they could, medals to 3 who held it the longest.
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Tower of Turnt - 2 people from each team being given the same materials, had 5 minutes to build as tall of a tower as possible, tallest 3 structures received the medal.
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Quarters - A small version of the game that increased in difficulty where one person from each team would bounce a quarter into a shot glass and the last one to make it would be eliminated, the last 3 standing received medals.
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Beer Relay - A set of a few tasks that tested different abilities and each team needed to get all the way through, first 3 to finish received a medal.
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Small Puzzle (While final Memory Game person studied image and when puzzle was completed, studying had to conclude)
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Stacking Dice with Cups on Hands
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Stacking Cups with elbows
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Flip Cup x3
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Memory Game Image Recreation
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Learnings
Social Deduction games are complex designs. Revolving gameplay around player behavior and decision-making without set rules and options to select from really is difficult to balance and write rules for; especially when you need the rules to fit on a single, small sheet of 8.5” x 3 â…”” paper that involves no further explanation. I enjoyed the challenge of creating it, but I think I would rather work on an in-home, tabletop version where I can limit materials and players.