I made a fun and hopefully insightful game about some of the contradictions of capitalism.
This fall, I’ll be working with my publisher Pluto Books to run a crowdfunding campaign to manufacture it.
But meanwhile, this summer, I’ve released a free print-at-home version you can play with your friends and family.
I’d very much appreciate it if you played it and sent me feedback!
Billionaires and Guillotines is a raucous and moderately challenging competitive game for 2-5 players. New players can learn in under an hour. Experienced players can finish a game in less than 30-minutes.
You take on the roles of billionaires, competing to win by claiming 🏆PRIZES before a 🚩REVOLUTION happens and every billionaire loses (almost).
By using cards to ⬇️BID at five different 💹MARKETS, the billionaires can try and grab the five 🏆PRIZEs they need.
But hidden in the deck are ⚡️CRISIS cards that penalize players and unleash 👊🏾REBELS.
Players use 💰BRIBES to change 🏛️GOVERNMENT POLICY to make them richer, or to have the government 💸AUDIT their opponent.
When the going gets tough, the billionaires can trigger a ❗PANIC! phase, where they can cooperate to try and distract the public or put down the rebellion before the 💀GUILLOTINE gets wheeled out and all the billionaires lose (more than their assets).
As the players gain experience, each billionaire gets assigned a secret 🎭ROLE that gives them special powers.
To download the printable game and the manual, please visit https://ourmove.itch.io/billionaires-and-guillotines
If you do play Billionaires and Guillotines, could you send me some feedback? You could…
- Write me an email, send me a voice note or record a video.
- Please tell me how long it took you to learn and play the game and what happened (“it took us about 20-minutes to get the hang of the game, but then things started moving quickly. For most of the game, Karl was in the lead, but near the end Rosa used her gangster power to steal his private island and it looked like she would win. But then Che triggered the revolution and Slavoj won as the celebrity at 48mins in.”)
- Was the game fun? Was it fun for everyone? If not, why?
- What was frustrating or confusing?
- Any suggestions, either for changes to the game or ways we can publicize it?
Billionaires and Guillotines will be the first game either I or Pluto have published, so your feedback is especially welcome! If it’s successful, we’re looking forward to collaborating on a new initiative, Pluto Games, which will combine that press’s 50+ year history of publishing radical books with the rising popularity of board, card and other analog games.
A huge thanks not only to the fine folks at Pluto, but also to Stella Lawson and Sam Cousin who worked as graduate assistants to me over the past two years and did invaluable and fascinating research on the politics and political economy of games that helped get this game this far.