Cheater’s Game

The 107th Game of the Month from Invisible City Productions is Cheater’s Game. They say that cheaters never win. Prove them wrong in this game for three to five unscrupulous would-be financial barons. You can read the rules and download the PDF at:

http://www.invisible-city.com/play/508/cheaters-game

Cheater’s Game is a straightforward competitive game with a simple goal: End the tenth round with the highest score. Your score consists of two types of points: honest points and points you have from cheater’s alliances. Honest points are completely risk-free, but they’re harder to accumulate. Cheater’s alliance points are easy to accumulate, and accumulate faster when you have many players in your alliance. However, any member of an alliance can turn the other members of the alliance and take the points, adding them to their honest score. So the question is, “How far you trust a group of self-admitted cheaters?”

Cheater’s Game uses about five standard six-sided dice, two point trackers, a turn tracker, player score pawns, and several sets of cheater’s alliance pawns. The trackers and pawns you need to play are all available as a 284 KB PDF.

Cheater’s Game has fairly simple rules, but complex psychosocial dynamics. You could play it with children as young as 6 or 7, and use it as a tool for teaching ethical and social lessons. I think that Cheater’s Game is appropriate for ages 12 and up without adult supervision. A 4-player game takes about 45 minutes to play.

NOTE: Although it’s probably obvious, we at Invisible City do not encourage or endorse cheating – especially when your success comes at the expense of others. This game is meant to help children understand recent events where adults in high-profile, high-responsibility occupations did bad things. This game is also an exploration of a possible way to reduce the appeal of cheating.

Share and Enjoy!

Jonathan Leistiko
Games Advocate
Invisible City Productions
http://www.invisible-city.com/play/