Freeloader (game)

Last updated

Freeloader is a game published by Cheapass Games. The object of the game is to mooch as much free stuff as possible off of your friends and neighbours.

Contents

Gameplay

Freeloader comes with a set of 6 cardboard board pieces which are arranged in a circle. Each card is a house around the neighborhood. The houses belong to a doctor, a gambler, a hippie, an artist, a lawyer, and a waitress. Players move around the neighborhood by rolling dice. On any turn they can also choose to do a favor for someone - this is noted by them placing one of their tokens on that person's house. They can also choose at any time to draw a card instead of moving. The cards in their hand represent the things which they have their eye on. On their turn a player may also choose to trade in some of their favors for an item in their hand, playing it down onto the table into their "stuff". Each item costs a certain number of favors, and there are discounts depending on the house they borrow from and if they are the best friend of its owner. For example, the silk tie costs less if you are the lawyers best friend, while the leftover pork costs less if you are at the waitresses house.

The game ends when the last card is drawn. At this time only those players who have mooched food, clothing, and shelter can win. Amongst those the player with the most points win (each item is worth a certain number of points). This can lead to cutthroat strategy. For example, your opponent may have 20 more points than you, but if you can take away his only shelter item he does not qualify to win.

Each card in the deck is illustrated, and most contain humorous diary entries about them.

The game itself is published under the Cheapass Games philosophy of not including unnecessary pieces. This means you will need to provide your own playing pieces, tokens and dice (which can usually be borrowed from other games).

A typical game of Freeloader takes 1 to 1.5 hours to play.

Reviews

Related Research Articles

Steve Jackson Games American game publishing company

Steve Jackson Games (SJGames) is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.

<i>Kill Doctor Lucky</i>

Kill Doctor Lucky is a humorous board game designed by James Ernest and released in 1996 by Cheapass Games. In 1998, Kill Doctor Lucky won the Origins Award for Best Abstract Board Game of 1997.

Cheapass Games

Cheapass Games is a game company founded and run by game designer James Ernest, based in Seattle, Washington.

Give Me the Brain

Give Me the Brain is a discard-style card game designed by James Ernest and released in 1996 by Cheapass Games. In the game, players assume the role of zombies attempting to complete their tasks for the day at Friedey's, "the fast food restaurant of the damned", yet they only have one brain to share between them. The game inspired several sequels, all set at Friedey's.

Button Men is a dice game for two players invented by James Ernest of Cheapass Games and first released in 1999.

In tabletop games and video games, game mechanics are the rules that govern and guide the player's actions, as well as the game's response to them. A game's mechanics thus effectively specifies how the game will work for the people who play it.

McDonalds Monopoly

The McDonald's Monopoly game is a sales promotion run by fast food restaurant chain McDonald's, with a theme based on the Hasbro board game Monopoly. The game first ran in the U.S. in 1987 and has since been used worldwide.

Zombies!!! is a tile-based strategy board game for two to six players. Zombies!!! won the 2001 Origins Award for Best Graphic Presentation of a Board Game, and Zombies!!! 3: Mall Walkers won 2003's Origins Award for Best Board Game Expansion.

Deadwood is a board game for 3-8 players produced by Cheapass Games. In it, players assume the roles of bit actors working for a B-Movie Studio who try to make as much money as possible. This is done by taking on roles such as "man on fire," "woman in black dress," and "falls off roof." Players are represented by dice, which denote what "level" actor each player is. The original version of the game was available through various game outlets. The rules, boards, and cards for a revised edition are now available for free download from the company's website, and are being developed into a deluxe edition via Kickstarter.

<i>Arkham Horror</i>

Arkham Horror is a cooperative adventure board game designed by Richard Launius, originally published in 1987 by Chaosium. The game is based on Chaosium's roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu, which is set in the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft and other horror writers. The game's second edition was released by Fantasy Flight Games in 2005, with a third edition in 2018.

Devil Bunny Needs a Ham is a board game by Cheapass Games for 2-4 players. In the game, sous-chefs try to climb up a building while Devil Bunny attempts to knock them off in the mistaken belief that doing so will get him a ham.

The Very Clever Pipe Game is a card game produced by Cheapass Games.

A number of related games under the Yahtzee brand have been produced. They all commonly use dice as the primary tool for game play, but all differ generally. As Yahtzee itself has been sold since 1954, the variants released over the years are more recent in comparison, with the oldest one, Triple Yahtzee, developed in 1972, eighteen years after the introduction of the parent game.

Android is an adventure board game designed by Kevin Wilson and Dan Clark, published in 2008 by Fantasy Flight Games. Set in a dystopian future, where the Moon is colonized and androids and clones are real, players take on the roles of murder investigators, investigating a murder within the fictional cities of New Angeles and Heinlein, a colony on the Moon. Players attempt to gain Victory Points by solving the murder, solving the conspiracy, and/or resolving the investigators' personal issues. The player with the most Victory Points wins the game.

<i>Catan</i> Multi-player competitive-cooperative board game

Catan, previously known as The Settlers of Catan or simply Settlers, is a multiplayer board game designed by Klaus Teuber. It was first published in 1995 in Germany by Franckh-Kosmos Verlag (Kosmos) as Die Siedler von Catan. Players take on the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop holdings while trading and acquiring resources. Players gain victory points as their settlements grow; the first to reach a set number of victory points, typically 10, wins. The game and its many expansions are also published by Catan Studio, Filosofia, GP, Inc., 999 Games, Κάισσα (Káissa), and Devir.

<i>Lords of Waterdeep</i> Board game

Lords of Waterdeep is a German-style board game designed by Peter Lee and Rodney Thompson and published by Wizards of the Coast in 2012. The game is set in Waterdeep, a fictional city in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Players take the role of masked rulers of Waterdeep, deploying agents and hiring adventurers to complete quests and increase their influence over the city.

<i>Elder Sign</i> (card game)

Elder Sign is a cooperative card and dice game, based on the Cthulhu Mythos of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft and Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. It is published by Fantasy Flight Games, which also produces the Cthulhu Mythos games Arkham Horror, Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, Mansions of Madness, and Eldritch Horror.

Fireside Games is a US based board game publishing company owned and operated by Justin De Witt and Anne-Marie De Witt. Based in Austin, Texas, the company was founded in 2007. They published their first game, Castle Panic in 2009, and have published several expansions and sequels as well as other titles since then.

Hexagony is an abstract strategy board game for 2 to 6 players that was published as Bin'Fa by Taoist Arts Inc. in 1977, as Hexagony by Avalon Hill in 1980, and later re-released in a slightly modified form by Kenterprises as Bin'Fa.

Evolution: Random Mutations is a card game created by Dmitriy Knorre and Sergey Machin in 2010. The game is inspired by the evolutionary biology. It was published by SIA Rightgames RBG. Publishing of the game was financed in Boomstarter. English, French and German game editions were published in 2014.

References

  1. "Pyramid: Pyramid Pick: Freeloader Board Game".