Cartooner

The game is played in four rounds that build in intensity, and each round lasts five minutes. Your goal is to get the most fame points each round by combining your theme cards and the fleeting market trends that are only valid for one round. In the end, the player with the most fame points wins... but all players go home with a comic book of their own.

Start by drawing three theme cards at random to determine the subject of your comic book. Will dinosaurs, secret hideouts and car chases be the focus of your comic? Werewolves, obnoxious co-workers and the desire to be famous? Or pirates, blobs and the last human on Earth? When time is up, follow these simple rules to score points:

        Rule 1: You get 1 fame point for each theme you express in your comic in a way that other players can recognize by drawing it or writing it in a speech bubble.
        Rule 2: You get 2 fame points for drawing something in each panel, even if it is very simple.
        Rule 3: You get 2 more points for keeping it succinct by using three or fewer speech bubbles on the page. It's that simple.

Rounds 2 through 4 introduce an element of strategy: Trend Cards. Each trend card gives you new ways to earn fame points for that round. Unlike themes, which are personal, trend cards represent the market and affect all players in the game. Your fickle readers may want you to inject superheroes, funny animals, medical dramas, disaster stories, mystery, romance or any of the 52 trends into your story. It's every artist's dilemma: stick to your original story or sell yourself for glory?

Each round brings more panels to draw and trends to follow. In addition, each round brings more fame into play than the previous round, so the outcome of the game remains uncertain until the end.

At the end of the last round, the winner is the one with the most fame tokens, but each player ends the game with his or her own cartoon.

With hundreds of thousands of possible combinations, you'll never run out of ideas.