Unboxed the Board Game Blog

Go down in the dungeon. Kill everything you meet. Backstab your friends and steal their stuff. Grab the treasure and run. Admit it. You love it. Munchkin is the mega-hit card game about dungeon adventure . . . with none of that stupid roleplaying stuff. You and your friends compete to kill monsters and grab magic items. Don the Horny Helmet and the Boots of Butt-Kicking. Wield the Staff of Napalm . . . or maybe the Chainsaw of Bloody Dismemberment. Start by slaughtering the Potted Plant and the Drooling Slime, and work your way up to the Plutonium Dragon! Start with the Munchkin Deluxe Edition. When you want more variety, there are lots of supplements you can add . . . more silly monsters to kill, more great treasures to find!

You are movie producers in a failing film production company. You have one last chance to make a successful film - otherwise the company will collapse and you’ll never work in this town again! You have to use the resources at your disposal to produce this film on time and under budget, ensure it’s a high enough quality, and make some sense of the resulting story. No time to waste - roll camera! Roll Camera! is a cooperative or solo dice worker placement game of resource management and a central geometric puzzle representing your shooting arrangement. You throw the custom D6 Crew dice, each face representing a different production department (camera, light, sound, actor, production design, visual effects) and assign them to actions, either on the main board or on your individual player boards. Your player board features a specific head of department (Director, Producer, Cinematographer, Editor, Production Designer or The Star) and contains unique action spaces that can be used on your turn. Place the Crew in specific arrangements matching those on the Shot cards, resolve the constant Problems getting in your way, and hold production meetings to play Idea cards from your hand to help out. Everything costs time and money, and you lose if either one runs out. You must also ensure your film reaches a certain level of Quality in order to win! At the game's end, you'll have a unique sequence of completed Shot cards which you can "premiere" using the story cues -- it's the filmmaking game that results in a "real" movie!

In The Networks, you and your opponents are new television networks, and you need new programming. For this, you’ll need Shows, Stars, and Ads. Shows need Stars and Ads. Stars give you bonus viewers (points), and Ads give you extra money. You’ll need everything you can get; you'll have a small amount of resources and time, and you must grab the latest hot show before your opponents. And some Stars will give their best effort only if you put them on in the proper conditions. For example, some Stars only want to be put on dramas. Other Stars want to be the only Star on the show. And your Ads will give you the most money only if you put them on in the correct time slot. Finally, Shows age and viewers lose interest, so you have to keep your line-up fresh by canceling shows and sending them into reruns. Fortunately, you can get viewers from your reruns, and you'll get bonuses if you get a lot of shows of the same genre throughout the game. If you need a special push, Network Cards can give you special powers — but will a Network Card be better than another action? You'll have to make that call. The player with the most viewers after five seasons wins!

Congrats, filmmaker! Your career is finally finding its footing, thanks to your determination, luck, and more than a few questionable scripts. While other filmmakers burden themselves with “important” movies that have “big” budgets and are “good,” YOU are wisely blazing a trail in the opposite direction: the B-Movie! Yes, the B-movie - low on budget, but high on thrills, chills, and bloody spills. This may not be the glamorous side of Hollywood but if you roll your dice right, it could still be profitable! This time around, you'll have access to new roles and specialized equipment to help you get the job done. But your responsibility to produce a watchable film is as demanding as ever! Your movies now have unique genre requirements: crime, fantasy, horror, sci-fi, western -- or some kind of mixed-up genre soup combination. The whole thing is causing more disorganization and chaos than ever before... There's even less time to waste - Roll Camera!!