The year is 1947 and you are a member of the thriving movie-making industry of Hollywood. However, it is suspected that there are communists hiding among your small production studio slipping “un-Patriotic” messages, themes, props, and lines into your movies! Will you be able to find all the communists before your studio is shut down? Or will you be suspected yourself and banned from the industry? In the game each player will secretly be a Patriot, Communist, or Rising Star. Each round every player will have a unique Job to perform (such as the Screenwriter, Gaffer, Director, Actor, Editor, etc). These jobs will affect what kind of movie is getting made that round, what cards are in players’ hands, and who will receive special information. Players can choose to skip their jobs to instead re-roll any two of the dice in the game. At the end of each round the players with stars showing on their dice will get to add a card into the movie. The added cards will be shuffled, one will be removed, and the rest will be revealed. The team with the majority of revealed symbols (including the symbols on that round’s movie poster) wins the round! Indicate the winning team for the round by placing that team’s matching film-strip over the movie poster. The first team to win 4 rounds wins the game! The Rising Star plays both sides by trying to make the game go to 7 rounds and making the 7th round a tie. Hollywood 1947 is a social deduction game. You must never show your cards or loyalty to anyone, but you may say whatever you’d like about the cards you put into a movie, or about your true allegiance. Open discussion about which cards were added into a movie is encouraged. However, if you are a Communist or the Rising Star, lying will often help you accomplish your goals since the majority of players will be Patriots. That’s a wrap. Most players get the hang of the game after only a few minutes. So let’s go make some movies, but be careful who you trust! Hollywood 1947 is the 5th standalone game in the Dark Cities Series by Facade Games. Previous games in the series include Salem 1692, Tortuga 1667, Deadwood 1876, and Bristol 1350.

Read more less

Every word counts, so focus and think carefully about your choices. In the brain-teasing co-operative game Sides, you have to weigh your options and wisely choose your words. The objective of the game is simple: Each round, help two detectives find a mystery word. To do so, the other players (the witnesses) give detectives a one-word clue that starts with the letter at either end of the letter-card line. The detectives then jointly offer an answer, and if they found the solution, two other players become the detectives and a new word is uncovered; if not, the witness players suggest a new clue with a new letter card. The fewer the clues used and the more words guessed, the higher the score. Will you beat the world record?

Read more less

The year is 1667 and you are a pirate sailing the waters of the Caribbean. A Spanish Galleon floats nearby, and you’ve talked your crewmates into working together to steal all of its treasure. What you haven’t told your fellow pirates is that you have no intentions on sharing the treasure once you have it. Your crewmates have told you that they share your loyalty and that they’ll help you maroon the greedy pirates on your ship to the rocky island of Tortuga. But you’ve seen your friends’ loaded pistols and heard their whisperings of a mutiny. You know that nobody can be trusted.Tortuga is all about the interactions you have with the other players. In some cases, such as when you and your shipmates are attacking the Spanish Galleon, you need to rely on your enemies in order to succeed. In the very next turn, however, your shipmates might stab you in the back with a mutiny in order to keep all the treasure for themselves.Since nobody holds a "hand" of cards, this game is also about knowledge and communication regarding the community Event cards. Unless you are in desperation mode, it is not wise to reveal Event cards at random. Almost half of the Event cards can hurt your team drastically. It's often in your best interest to use an action to view the cards first, or to rely on the knowledge of a trusted ally. Knowing where harmful Event cards are located allows you to force an enemy to reveal those cards and suffer the consequences. The most successful players are the ones who are able to discern who is on their team and then share vital information with them at opportune moments.Vote cards also play a key role in the game. Each Vote card has three sections - one each for Attacks, Mutinies, and Brawls. Players must put themselves in the best position to use their Vote cards, since their hand of Vote cards may not always be ideal based on their pawn location. For example, sometimes it may be worth putting in Water, causing an attack to fail, in order to save a Crossbones card for when you want to Mutiny against your captain.

Read more less

Tribes is a role-playing game that plays a lot like a board game and simulates the way our ancestors lived long ago. The players are cave men and women. They hunt and gather food, make their tribal laws, and deal with natural disasters, but the object of the game is simple: Look after the children! In this game, the way to win is to have the most kids and do whatever you have to do to make sure they survive to adulthood. The players must know when to cooperate, and when to cut their losses and protect their own families. Players can re-create – and change – the earliest human societies by instituting their own laws and social patterns, and see what effects the rules of society have on their ability to survive and reproduce. With several copies of the game and a referee, it's possible to have several tribes playing at once, competing, trading, exchanging members, and even making war on each other.

Read more less