Hello everyone, I'm Mathew Georghiou, the founder and Chief Experience Designer at MediaSpark and I'm going to tell you how to play the GoVenture Card Game.
The GoVenture Entrepreneur Card Game comes in two themes: the Entrepreneur theme and the Monster Hunter theme. I'm gonna show you the game using the Entrepreneur theme. The basic gameplay is straightforward. Every player starts with a business, in this case a toy business. I have to collect products, I might collect musical instruments, or even better toys. I really want toys because I have a toy business, and I can only sell toys and I want to sell those toys to customers. Here's a customer that is looking to buy video games and toys, and I can try to make a sale of this toy to this customer. If I make the sale I say "Kaching!" outloud and I earn the amount of money shown on the customer card. In this case, I earn $4. That's now my money, and to win the game I have to make enough sales to have $20 on hand. Now the amount of money I have on hand might go up and down because I may have to buy things along the way, or things may cost money. But if I can get to $20 I win the game. Now, there is another way to win the game, which makes things a little bit more interesting and adds another dimension to the gameplay, and that is to collect all three world cards. See the three world cards here, stick them together and you have the entire world. At the bottom of each world card you'll see two products needed to win a world card, and I have to sell those two products shown at the bottom of the card to get it. For example, to win this part of the world I can sell two soccer balls, two candies or lollipops or one of each and I'll win that card. If I win all three cards I win the game, so it's just a second way of winning that adds dimension to the game. Game setup is pretty simple, we have our action cards, we have our product cards and we have to make some room for the discard pile. Here we have our customer cards, and now we have to make sure there's enough room for our discard pile and what we're setting aside. For example, we have some money cards which are used for making change by the bank, and we have our world cards which we saw earlier and they're set aside as well, and then we also have our leftover business cards. These are businesses that we can buy and sell and so on. In total there are six types of businesses and there are six types of products that correspond to each business.
Let's take a look at what happens on your turn. So when it's your turn there are three steps. The first step is you always start your turn by picking up a product card. Now you can pick up from the top discard pile or blindly pick from the top of the pot. So that starts your turn as you immediately pick up a product card, which we did because it's a great way to move the game along. The third thing we have to do (I'm skipping the second for now) is we end our turn by either picking up another product card from the top of the discard pile or the deck, or we can pick up a customer card. IF we can make a sale now I can pick up the customer card at the top of the discard pile or customer deck, and if I have happen to have a product that matches the customer I've picked up and make a sale. I say Kaching! If I cannot make a sale with this customer I might want to choose from the deck and hopefully makes a sale. If I don't have any of my own product then there's no real advantage to picking up a customer card if I cannot make a sale since I cannot hold a customer in my hand I'm better picking up from the product deck. However there are instances where I may still want to pick up a customer card even though I cannot make a sale. For example If I happen to know that the player whose turn is next will be able to make a sale with this customer because maybe they're selling sporting goods or candy and they happen to have that product card. I can see their inventory because you can see all player's hands, so I may not want them to get the sale so what I'll do is pick up the next card even though I know I cannot make a sale and then I'll bury the card underneath it. Now in the case of this example it backfired on me because I picked up a similar customer looking for the same product and instead of a $3 sale I went to a $4 sale so that is a risk I took and it backfired on me. That's one of the great things about this game, is that there's a number of levels to the gameplay that you have to consider. So step one is that you pick up a product card and step three is you ending your turn by picking up a customer card or another product card. So let's talk about step 2 that we skipped. Step two allows you to do all sorts of things, for example you can trade cards with other players if you have a product that you can't sell and another player might need that card. You can negotiate a trade under any terms that you want, you may trade it for another product or maybe money. It's completely up to you and that's one of the cool things about this game is that every turn you play you pick up a card that is of value to you because even if you can't use it, there's still value in trading or buying action cards. Also on step 2 you can buy more businesses and every new business has a price showing on the card itself. So you can see this one says buy $4 and actually all the businesses are $4 or $5 or you can try to negotiate purchasing and other players if you want, or trading it in some way if you think you can save money that way. You can trade business cards and product cards, but you cannot trade world cards.
One of the things you can do on your turn is buy an action card, and to do that it costs two product cards. For example I have these two product cards, and I trade them in for a action card. Normally I want to trade the cards, but if I can't find a use for it or if it isn't a toy card I can sell, I can trade these two cards in, and there's a bit of strategy required here. I'm not going to put musical instruments down if the next person after me is selling them. I'll bury them at the bottom of the pile instead, so they only get the option of taking whatever is on top.
You can play casually or think forward a little bit, but for those who want a bit deeper gameplay, you can think these thing through. So I just traded two cards, and I get an action card now. The cool thing about action cards is that they're always good for you, which is bad news for other players because you can play them either for your benefit or to slow someone else down. I just picked up a no sale card which is a really cool card, and with that card I could hold it until the other players are about to make a sale and then I would throw that card down and surprise them, and they cannot make the sale. So that's a fun card to play, so all the cards in the action deck are good for you, unlike other cards. You can also keep action cards hidden until you're ready to play them.
So we're still talking about step 2 of your turn, you can not only buy an action card, you can buy as many active cards as you want, but you can also play as many action cards as you want, assuming those action cards are playable during your turn. Again, this is one example of one that is not playable during my turn. I have to wait for somebody else to try and make a sale before I play that one, so action cards are really cool. So to recap, on your turn and every player's turn there are three steps: Step one: Picking a product card Step two: you can trade cards, buy action cards, play action cards, and buy new businesses
Step three: finish your turn with another product card or a customer card. If you remember those three steps you're good to go!
So let's take a look at a typical hand that player might have in front of them. Now, first let's notice that all the cards have to be face-up, everybody knows the cards that everybody has, which is part of the strategy of this game, it actually keeps you engaged in every turn of the game which is really cool. Again, you can play the game casually and have fun without worrying about this deep level strategy, but if you're interested in the strategy of the game you can follow every player's hand which it makes it much more interesting and adds extra dimensions to the gameplay. You can keep your action cards hidden until it's time to play them, by the way when you play an action card, it's discarded from the game completely so if you run out of action cards that's it, they don't get recycled again. Another part of the gameplay that we built. A couple of things, my hand one is I have a business in the case, the toy business, I also have a toy product which is great because that allows me to make a sale if I don't have a toy product, I can't make a sale. I can't sell a soccer ball. It's a sports product and I have a toy business, I can only sell toys so I want to collect as many of these toys as I can so I can sell them. I also happen to have some pets but I don't have a pet business. It's not that these products are not valuable, they still are because I could trade them with another player, who may be wanting a pet or a sports product. Or I could trade them in for action cards so they will still have value even though I cannot sell them at the moment, and I also have an opportunity buying more businesses. In fact, I can buy a new business at any time as long as I can afford it or trade for it, and then maybe I will be able to sell pets or sporting goods or some other type of products that are available in the game. There is a catch though. The catch is that at the end of your turn when you finish all three steps of your turn you cannot have more than five cards in your hand, and that's an important issue because then you know you have to balance not having too many businesses, not having too much inventory, or too many unplayed action cards. You cannot end your turn with more than five cards, you can have more than five cards during your term but not end with more than five. If you do, you have to discard one of them. For example,, because you've ended your turn now you if you were at step two of your turn you could play an action card so again, that's another level of strategy here where if you realize many of the cards are possible, for example maybe I'll trade these two and get an action card so that way it'll reduce the number of cards in my hand or I'll play this action card, or I'll trade with another player so that's something else you can do to reduce the number of cards in my hand. But you can't have multiple businesses. For example maybe I will buy a video game business on my turn but that does take up one space in my hand and increases the chances of me possibly making sales and buying and getting valuable products, but again it takes up the space in my hand and that's a compromise I have to figure out. Now, if you do make a sale let me go back here. If I do make a sale I find a customer here. My customer and I'm gonna sell this product to that customer and I say Kaching. I now keep this and here's what I like to do I like to put the product underneath my toy business and the amount of money and the customer above it because those cards do not count in my five limit because there's a sale made. This is now money, it's not longer a customer so the cards aren't counted.
If I make two sales I mentioned earlier, you can get a world card so if I happen to make two says of let's say, the toys I can earn this world card so what I would do then If I had to buy two of these guys or a video game or a robot I would trade them in, they would go to the bottom of the discard pile and I get this world card and what I normally do is just put it under there or you can set it side. Here it is a requirement that you disclose how much money and how many world cards you have if other players as, so that's part of the rules if anyone wants to know how much money you've amassed or have any world cards you have to disclose that. You don't have to disclose your action cards, they can stay hidden until you're ready to show them but yo do that to disclose how much money and world cards you have. The purpose there is we want all players to know who's in the lead and who's getting close to winning because the other cool part about gameplay is when you know who's in the lead, players tend to use their action cards against the player and kind of drags them back into the game a little bit so that makes it a little bit more fun and interesting as well. So to recap: the main gameplay is straightforward. Every player has a business and with that business you try to collect products that match that business, gather an inventory of products and then you try and find customers how are willing to buy that product. You make the sale, Kaching, just made four bucks on my way to twenty to win the game or collect all of the world cards to win as well.
There you have it, that's how it works!