Startups is a game of getting shares to make that cash.

But don’t get too many… or too few.

There are six companies that will change the world as we know it! You can be part of their success and be an investor. Try to become rich by making the right decisions!

Startups Game Play

TLDR: Collect shares in various companies but if you don’t have the most you have to pay money to the player that does.

Theme

I don’t know how shares, dividends or any of that works but I don’t think it works like this.

Setup

Shuffle and deal out 3. Five cards are removed from the game so while you know how many cards each company has, you’re never sure what is in the deck.

Components & Artwork

Standard stuff here. The company logos are OK.

Ease of Teaching

Draw and discard… that is all. The nuances around scoring are simple to explain too.

Startups Summary

This actually reminded me of No Thanks! Mostly because you have to put tokens on cards to skip them and you want to play some cards and avoid others…

I found this game very difficult and it was reflected in my scores. Playing 5 players with the same people I went from 3rd with 17 in my first game to last with 3 points in my 3rd game. For context, you start with 10 points.

The first game was in pure ignorance and luck mainly. In the second game I tried to spread myself too thin and while I made a fair bit in I paid a lot out. In the 3rd game, I tried to restrict myself to a good amount of 2-3 companies and obviously, it went very wrong.

So I was thinking for the next day what I could do to win next time… then I saw this on the BGG listing.

“You have to be lucky in this game”.

Well, there ya go. That puts my mind at ease and makes this game worth very little to me now.

Jesta ThaRogue