At a Glance
The stock market is at all-time highs right now. Why shouldn’t you get in on a piece of that action? Risk a bit of scratch–this is your chance to Get Rich Quick! This 3-5 player game for players aged 8 and up can serve as a roadmap for joining the 1% and sailing the globe in your very own yacht… or at least act as an escape for the next 30-45 minutes of your 99% existence.
Components
The game that I looked at was “near final” so some of the components may have changed. In the box, there is:
- 1 Playing board
- 35 Get Rich Quick Action Cards (5 sets of seven)
- 6 Purchasable Action Cards, denoted by black borders and printed price tags
- 60 Meeples (5 sets of twelve)
- 85 Money bills (50 x 1,000, 20 x 5,000, 15 x 10,000)
- 70 Fortune Points (56 x 1pt, 30 x 5pt)
- 5 Six-sided dice
- 1 Rulebook
The playing board is smaller than most at approximately 16″ x 16″, but it’s nice. Despite being a bit spartan in terms of art, the text is easy to read and determine what each space offers. The board is meant to be a shopping center for you to spend some of your quickly earned cash. What art there is happens to be pretty cartoony, which adds to the sense of the impending craziness.
All of the cards are good quality and easy to discern what they do. The meeples are meeples, in a good variety of colors, including a very rich purple, a color not seen often enough in game components. The money is Monopoly thin but printed on both sides. By the middle of our first game, much of the cash had big folds and wrinkles in it. Likewise, the Fortune Point tokens were of pretty thin cardboard. Again, this was a “near final” copy, so some of these items may have changed. Not that Get Rich Quick needs to have super high-quality components, but a game based on a highfalutin lifestyle might benefit from a quality that suggests Wall Street a bit more than Main Street.
How to Play
Setup is very easy. Place the Purchasable Action Cards, Currency, and Fortune Points beside the board. Each player gets a set of Action Cards, numbered one to seven, 12 meeples of the same color, and 5,000 clams. That’s it. You’re ready to play.
Each turn, players evaluate their seven cards and pick three to play. Players can choose to Go to Work (earn 1,000), Invest in Real Estate (Pay 2,000, Earn 6,000–but only if two other players do NOT play this card), Invest in Penny Stocks (Pay 1,000, Earn 3,000–but only if at least one other player does NOT play this card), Launch a Start-Up (Pay 3,000, Earn 10,000–but only if you were the only one to play this card), play The Lottery (Pay 1,000, Roll 5 dice–3 of a kind pays 4,000, 4 of a kind, 10,000, and 5 of a kind 30,000), Take a Break (earns a single Fortune Point), or Shop! (buy a single item from the Shopping Center board or a reusable, Purchasable Action Card). Cards are resolved from one (Go to Work) to seven (Shop!).
As you accumulate wealth, you will want to spend it, and a visit to the Summit Shopping Center will be in order. There you can buy the ability to play an additional card on your turn, discounts on all future purchases, the opportunity to make two purchases per turn, additional income when playing the work card, purchase Fortune Points, or one of a half dozen other options. You can also purchase an additional Work, Lottery, or Take a Break cards. All of the shopping options are limited in their availability and only those who claim them by placing a meeple and paying the price will get to enjoy the benefits.
That’s it. After cards are resolved and shopping is done, players gather their cards, reassess their portfolio needs, and play another round.The goal is to be the first player to accumulate 25 Fortune Points.
Why You Should Play
One of my favorite childhood games was Hasbro’s Pay Day where you worked your way through a month of income, windfalls, and expenses. It was my first exposure to finances and it fascinated me how money passed in and out of my wallet so quickly–what a harbinger of things to come! It was a fun game but also a good opportunity for a kid to gain a little understanding of money while having a fun time.
To that end, Get Rich Quick is a fun financial game that a whole family can enjoy. In its cards are small lessons that teach kids the importance of steady income, the poor odds of playing the lottery, and the challenge of competition when entering new enterprises. Granted, it’s just the spark of an idea in these lessons, but it provides a jump-off for discussions later. Too few kids learn about finances until its far too late. Might as well learn something while playing a game!
Gameplay is pretty straightforward and not too challenging, get money as fast as you can and then convert it to Fortune Points. I like the scarcity of items on the board, which makes the worker placement important and heightens the race aspect of the game. The cards you can play are limited, so you have to do some decent guesswork to work out how your opponents might play the next round. As you can see from the restrictions of some of these cards, it’s a game that benefits from having four or its full capacity of five to be really enjoyable. The simultaneous playing of cards does give the game a bit of suspense, especially when playing cards that only work if others don’t play them.
Unlike other financial-based games, there are absolutely no “take that” cards, no downfalls (other than others playing the same cards and preventing your play), no taxes, capital gains, bear markets, SEC investigations, or anything else to set you back. It’s a full bore, fast race to see who can get to the finish line first.
Get Rich Quick is an enjoyable family game, an all out race to see who cam become the richest in the shortest amount of time. It’s a lightweight worker placement that presents a small amount of suspense in its card play. It plays quickly and is accessible to a wide audience. Get Rich Quick is available now.
Disclosure: GeekDad was sent a copy of this game for review purposes.
