About
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First of all, what does the title mean? The Big Easy is a Nickname for New Orleans, USA, referring to the easy-going, laid back attitude to life that jazz musicians and local residents indulge in there. Busking refers to the act of performing music on the streets for tips.
Big Easy Busking is an area control game for 1-5 players about being the best street musician in New Orleans. The game is played over three days (rounds), in which players choose which locations to play their set of songs. It takes time to play a song, so players decide on their next turn whether they're going to use all of their energy at the location or to only use some of it to save the rest for later songs. If a player matches the mood of the crowd with the song that they're playing, they can get bonus tips!
- Thematic Actions: Songs require differing amounts of energy from musicians and players are rewarded greatly for playing the songs that the crowd wants to hear.
- Partially Known Information: While you know where the other musicians are playing, you're never quite sure how much energy the other players will put into each of their performances until the end of their next turn.
- Escalating Rounds: The game starts with three locations, but by the final round, there's five locations so players have to choose where to play wisely!
- Engaging Gameplay: Players determine how much energy to allocate to each location after seeing how other players play, so players must pay attention to what happens between their turns.
Decide whether you want to try to get a few tips from the crowd at every location or if you really want to win over a particular crowd in this musical game of area control!
Below is the How to Play video:
Below is a Solo Playthrough:
The goal of the game is to be the street band with the most tips at the end of three nights, or rounds, of gameplay. You earn tips through either winning over a crowd by having put the most energy into performing for them and through putting at least a certain amount of energy into performing for the crowd.
Your turn has three parts; finishing the song you started at the beginning of your previous turn (if you have one to finish), tipping (which is optional), and then choosing one action between these three: playing a song, learning a song, or passing.
The game gets really interesting if you or your opponent's play a song where the mood matches the crowd. If you match the mood of the crowd, you get the choice of either leaving all your energy tokens on the crowd and earning $1 (which gets you closer to winning the game) OR you can leave at least one energy and redistribute the rest of your energy to your band members. This choice allows you to fake out your opponents or change your mind based on what other players do on their turns.
This means that you can tell what the other players are going to do on their next turn if the song they played doesn't match the mood, but the most you know about songs that match is that they have to leave at least one energy on the crowd.
The second part of your turn is optional; you can tip your band members to give them extra energy.
Now, you get a choice between playing a song, learning a song, or passing. When you play a song, you get the choice of the songs in your hand and a set of standard songs that everyone knows. Standard songs all start off at a cost of $1 to play, but if anyone plays them, the next person has to play $2 to play that same song. The standard songs go back to being $1 at the start of each round.
You can also learn to play a song.
Your final choice is to pass; if you do this, you take any remaining energy off your Player card and flip it over. You are now done for the round.
After everyone has passed, each Crowd pays out. This happens both for the threshold payout and 1st Place Payout. If two players tie for most energy on a Crowd, they both get paid the 1st Place Payout.
Big Easy Busking is played in three rounds. The first round, Thursday Night, has three Crowd cards, the second, Friday Night, has four Crowd cards, and the final round, Saturday Night, has five Crowd cards.
The winner is the player that has the most money at the end of the third round!
Solo Mode
There's also Robot Players that can be added to the game! This is who you fight against for the solo version of the game, or you can add it in for an extra challenge to the multiplayer game. The Robot Player has quick turns and makes the game a race to the finish line.
Rules and Print and Play
You can learn from the full rules here: http://weirdgiraffegames.com/bigeasy/BEBRules.pdf (The rules are not final and will be formatted professionally in the final game). If you'd like us to translate the rules to another language, please tell us!
You can download the prototype black and white Print and Play here:
Tabletop Simulator
You'll be able to try out the game on Tabletop Simulator at this link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1609651754
More reviews will be added shortly!
Stretch goals will be revealed shortly!
People sometimes wonder why they should back a Kickstarter campaign instead of waiting to get the game later in retail. The most important reason not to wait with Big Easy Busking is that we currently don't know if Big Easy Busking will go into distribution. If you wait, you may end up missing out, as we won’t have many extra copies to sell and unless your local store backs the campaign, they won’t be carrying it either.
- Kickstarter Limited – Big Easy Busking might be very hard to find after the campaign, outside of select conventions.
- Help Us Improve Big Easy Busking – We have a ton of stretch goals planned to help improve the quality of the components and add more content to the game for everyone!
- Discounted – After the campaign, we will sell the extra copies at a higher cost.
- EU Friendly – copies will be sent from inside the EU to avoid VAT fees for backers.
Most importantly, without you, Big Easy Busking would not get created. We definitely appreciate every backer’s support in making our dream a reality.
We would love to support game stores by offering the Kickstarter versions of Big Easy Busking to retailers during the campaign. Back the project at the retailer level for $50, and we'll contact you closer to when we ship out rewards to get a count of games that you wish to get! An invoice will be sent to you before we ship your rewards.
Shipping costs for you differ based on your location:
- $4 for the United States
- $10 for the EU and Canada
- $15 for the rest of the world*
We are subsidizing part of the shipping cost as a benefit to you, to thank you for backing the campaign.
*We are currently not planning to ship to the following areas: Mexico, Brazil, and Russia. If your country is listed here, but you would still like to get a copy of the game, please send us a message. We make no guarantees, but we will try our best to work out a solution.
We are still working on the fulfillment strategy with several potential fulfillment partners to get Big Easy Busking to you the proper way, with fulfillment partners in different parts of the world which will be chosen closer to shipping, as things tend to change over time.
To order a second copy of Big Easy Busking, add an additional $25 to your pledge with no additional shipping cost for the US, $5 extra for the EU, Canada, and rest of the world.
We are happy to discuss group orders larger than two copies, but these need to be handled on a country-by-country basis. Please send us a direct message including country and number of copies to discuss.
Big Easy Busking is the fifth project by Weird Giraffe Games.
Weird Giraffe Games was founded to create games that are easy to learn and play, but layered with strategy.
The Big Easy Busking team is made of the following people:
We're looking forward to talking to you throughout this Kickstarter and after! Please feel free to reach out to us directly, in the comments, or in a variety of methods on social media if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. We would love to hear from you!
- Follow Weird Giraffe Games on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Board Game Geek or visit our website.
- We also have a Facebook Group called the Weird Giraffe Games Insiders where you can learn all the new things about Weird Giraffe Games, participate in contests, and earn prizes!
PODCASTS, INTERVIEWS, AND MORE INFO ABOUT BIG EASY BUSKING
Coming soon!
MEDIA COVERAGE
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
We'd also like to thank the following people for all of their help:
- Derek Maggs, Elizabeth Davidson, Jeremy Davis, Jeremy Howard, Jeremy Davis, Tyler Anderson, Raf Cordero, BJ from Board Game Gumbo, Matthew from Big Boss Battle, Marti and Sarah Mahood-Wormuth, and Eric Yurko for reviewing/previewing Big Easy Busking.
- Jack from Cardboard Herald, Cathy from Our Turn, Richard from We're Not Wizards, Board Game Gumbo, Flatout at the Table, Mike from Who What Why, Kurt from MFGCast, and Zach from Board with Friends for helping raise awareness of Big Easy Busking
And finally, an extra thank you to the Game Designers of North Carolina for making this game possible!
Risks and challenges
If you've gotten this far, you are seriously considering supporting us and we really appreciate that. We also want you to know that we take this very seriously.
Although we have already successfully funded and delivered multiple projects on Kickstarter, Big Easy Busking will have it's own unique issues. We would love if everything went smoothly, but we are also trying to be prepared for any problem that could arise.
Big Easy Busking will be manufactured by a reputable company (Longpack) but international shipping always has the potential for delays and complications.
If things run behind schedule, we think the best approach is to always be up front and communicative with backers. It's our goal to make post-campaign updates part of this experience and we plan to update monthly until the game has shipped to backers in order to keep backers informed of the progress of Big Easy Busking.
Learn about accountability on KickstarterQuestions about this project? Check out the FAQ
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Funding period
- (24 days)