Manage your own cinema

Are you into movies AND board games? Then we have something interesting here. We just received 🍿 Popcorn and couldn’t resist immediately getting it to the table.

In this bag-building game you manage your own cinema 🎥 -  drafting movies to show, attracting visitors and upgrading rooms. You have until the movie deck runs out to earn the most victory points, which are represented by popcorn in the game. 😁

The game is fairly simple and light on rules, but engaging at the same time. Each turn you get to buy a new movie and a new upgrade for your cinema if you have the money, plus if you did the appropriate advertising effects beforehand, get some new meeples into your bag. Then the main phase begins: you pull meeples out of your bag 🎒 and get to allocate them into your 3 theatres. 

There are two main things to look out for:
🎞️If the meeple color matches the movie color (which are thematically the different genres), you get to pick a bonus from the movie card
🎞️If the meeple color matches the seat color, you activate the seat’s bonus

Of course you might have more seats than meeples, or might prefer one effect over another, plus seats have to be filled in numerical order (meaning you have to commit multiple meeples to get some seat effects). I should also mention that available meeples are limited and they can be stolen by other players! 

These all make the decision making process fun. With each turn, movies lose available effects - after all, people don’t want to watch the same film forever - so you'll need to keep drafting new ones. There are also objectives 🎖️ you get to draft through some effects, which steer your decisions in certain directions, like what types of movies to get.

Popcorn is quick and fun, and you also have the signature IELLO production quality to go with it. Good components and awesome colorful illustrations - a special shoutout to the movie posters which are super funny, filled with all kinds of easter eggs. Just look at some of the pictures. 😆