card & board strategy
While Mr Perrochon intended Startup Fever time, both to further their own objectives as to be quite simple to play, layers of rules have well as to hinder other players. kept adding to its complexity. The various iterations of the board’s design, “I actually wanted to design game with very illustrated by Gary Simpson, have all been simple rules, and I was sure it was simple circular, reinforcing the product and user until I started play testing with people other cycle. than me. Later, as I tested with people I “I started with the number 10,000,000,000 didn’t know before, it became obvious that as the maximum number of users the rules are a lot more complex. That’s (approximately, once you get all humans when I started removing some of the cruft to go online). The user track would just that was in there from the early design follow the zeros from the right to the left. iterations,” he said. Later, that vanished, and I had to find ways “I see casual gamers and even some nongamers picking it up easily. The game has a slow first round so new players can figure out the basic mechanics before it gets more complex. But some experience with board games helps. Settlers of Catan is a much better starter game.”
Each player starts with two-to-four products - depending on how many players there are - and four event cards. The game is played over several years. Players adopt users, based on the number of engineers and a die roll. Then they earn revenue, based on the number of users and the number of suits. Third, the player can use money to hire more employees. During the product show down at year’s end users shift towards products that invested wisely. Outside the regular turn order, event cards can be played by any player at any
to arrange the elements on the board. The circular layout was just the one that worked best, as everybody needs to constantly access everybody else’s employees,” Mr Perrochon said. If Apple’s Steve Jobs were ever to be inserted into the game, Mr Perrochon knows what type of meeple he would become. “He’d definitely be considered a nerd, his foremost contributions are IMHO product design. As are Bill Gates or Larry and Sergey,” he said. “Making great products is the most important factor for profitability, and in the game that’s what the nerds do. But it’s not enough, you need to interact with your users, partners and customers, and that’s where the suits come in.” Unlike traditional Euros where a focus
S%$t happens Players receive a supply of event cards that can usually be played at any time. Some cards have events that benefit a particular company or product, but many of them are very brutal. Massive effects such as forcing an opponent to discard half their money, or being unable to manage their workforce on a product, essentially keeping them from poaching or adding new nerds and suits during a round.