Freak Shop

Designer	Henri Kermarrec
Publisher	Catch Up Games
Players	2-5
Playtime	15-30 mins
Suggested Age	8 and up
Additional Info	207487/freak-shop https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/207487/freak-shop/forums/63

Game description from the publisher:

The tourist season is fast approaching. As a mansion owner, you've come to the Freak Shop to stock your mansion with the horrors that will guarantee that your visitors have a most unforgettable stay!

Freak Shop is a short and simple tactical card game for 2 to 5 players that relies on a tricky trade mechanism. All cards in the game represent the frightening things, with values going from 1 to 10, that any real good freaky mansion owner must have in their collection. Players begin with four cards in their mansion (personal area), and cards are available in the Freak Shop (common zone at the center of the table). Each player's aim is to have their mansion worth the most fear points when the Freak Shop closes, with points coming from a combination of three randomly chosen objectives. To achieve this, they try to make the best trades between cards currently in their mansion and cards available in the Shop so that their collection grows in both quantity and value, while also best fitting the objectives.

On your turn, you make one single trade between cards currently in your mansion and cards available in the Shop. To do that, you have the choice between two options:


Sell at the fair price => Trade any number of cards totaling a given value for any number of cards worth exactly the same total value.
Get a good deal => Exchange a series of cards of one single value with a series of the same number of cards of another single value.


Throughout a game of Freak Shop, you try to take the best trade opportunities each turn to first make your mansion grow, then ensure that you can end with the collection worth the most points. Good deals help to get higher value cards, and fair price trades help to get more cards in your mansion. As everything is about trades, a central strategic point is to determine which cards are better used for optimizing new trades instead of being kept for scoring!