Popcorn
In Popcorn, each player manages their own movie theater and tries to show the best combination of movies in order to attract guests to their seats.
The game plays out over nine rounds, and in each round you may acquire a new movie, build or upgrade your theater, and use advertising to attract new guests — then it's showtime, with you drawing guests at random from your bag to see who has shown up. Place guests in the right seats to activate special powers; match them with the right movies, and you get a movie bonus as well, thanks to their enthusiasm for your good taste.
After watching films in your theater, guests might be spirited away to other theaters thanks to ads presented by those theater owners - but you'll probably do the same to them, too.
The bonuses from a movie get worse the longer it runs, so be sure to bring in fresh films to keep guests on the edge of your seats. After all, happy guests can help your theater win awards in town; more importantly, they can keep the "popcorn" piling up in your coffers, and whichever theater owner fills their popcorn box the best wins.
Number of players: 2 - 4
Game duration: 34 mn
Complexity: 3 / 5
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Play Popcorn and 1184 other games online.
No download necessary - play directly from your web browser.
With your friends and thousands of players from the whole world.
Free.
Rules summary
Overview and Goal
Popcorn is a bag-building game for 2 to 4 players. You each manage a movie theater and want to show the best movies to satisfy Guests, and also gain as much Popcorn as possible.
The game plays over around 9 rounds, each with 3 phases. In turn order, you may buy a movie, build a theater, and attract new Guests. Then, simultaneously, welcome your customers and seat them in your theaters. Optimize their seats to take the best actions, which will let you improve your cinema, influence your Guests, grow your audience, and gain money and Popcorn.
At the end of the last round, the player with the most Popcorn wins the game!
Gameplay Overview
A round plays over 3 phases: Buying and Advertising, Showings, then End of Round. Play begins with the player with the First Player marker, then continues clockwise.
1 Buying and Advertising
In this phase, each player takes a turn. On your turn, you may take these actions in any order (all these actions are optional):
- Buy a movie (Maximum 1 time per turn)
- Buy a theater (Maximum 1 time per turn) Note: You cannot take this action on your first turn.
- Activate Advertising tokens
2 Showings
- Open Cinema
Draw as many Guests from your bag as the number shown by thecube on your audience track at the bottom of your Cinema board
- Place Guests
After drawing your Guests, place them in your theaters as follows:
- You may only place Guests in theaters that are showing a movie.
- In each theater, place Guests in seat order (#1, then #2, etc.). You do not have to fill a theater before seating Guests in a different one.
- If you draw more Guests than there are available seats in your theaters showing a movie, place
the extra Guests in the exit zone of your cinema. Note: You may place a Guest on a seat of any color, but it’s better to place them on gray seats or those of their color, and also in theaters with movies of their color. Once all Guests are placed, continue to Seat and Movie Actions.
3 Seat and Movie Actions Now is when you may activate your Guests. Move from theater to theater, in any order you choose. You must activate all Guests in a single theater, in ascending order of their seats, before moving to any other theater. When you activate a Guest, they do the following in order: 1. Take 1 Seat action, if possible. 2. Take 1 Movie action, if possible. 3. Move to the exit. Note: You are never required to take an action.
End of Round
Theatrical Run
Move your Lobby sliders 1 space up on each of your Movie cards, covering 1 more action in each of your theaters. These actions will no longer be available in future rounds. You may continue showing a movie in your cinema even if it no longer has available actions. You may still place Guests in its theater to take Seat actions.