Yes, this is a board game review. No I am not reviewing popcorn, though I do love different types of popcorn. The board game, Popcorn is a game all about running the best movie theater that you can. TO do that you need to get the right guests in the right seats, play fun movies, and upgrade your theater as you go. Let’s talk about how this game plays and you can see if it’s a good one or not or right for you.

How To Play Popcorn

Like I said, Popcorn is a game about running the best theater. To do that you need to get the most buckets of popcorn at the end of the game, those are your victory points. But the game has more going on than just getting those, so let’s talk about how the game works.

Popcorn is played over a number of rounds where players bring in new movies to their theater, upgrade their theaters, and then place their guests. In turn order players can buy both theater upgrades and new movies. Then they place those into their theater board. You can only buy a movie and upgrade per turn.

Once every player has done that, then you draw out your movie goers. They might be one of four different colors or white. You place your movie goers into the seats of your theater. The rule is that they always start on the left and fill to the right. You don’t need to completely fill a theater, but a theater with two seats can’t fill in the right seat first.

While you buy things in turn order, the placing of the guests can be done at the same time. So can activating your guests. Your guests give you the bonus on their seat. Some seats, though, are a specific color and they only give you a bonus if that color meeple is in there. Then you slide your movie down so fewer bonuses are shown and continue the game.

The Bonuses

The first bonus is Popcorn. Very simple one, it is going to give you points if you get that.

Other bonuses are money. You need money to buy new movies and upgrade your theaters. You can even buy a third theater and get a movie for that with that money. This is your way to keep your movies viable and giving you bonuses.

You can also get more meeples. Or you can get rid of white meeples which won’t activate as many seat types or activate movies that match the meeples color.

Tickets are another bonus. Going up the ticket track sometimes gives you money. But the big thing is that it lets you draw more meeples from your bag for the theater each round. So you can place more.

A bonus token of a color. Each color has a bonus token that you can get. If you get that bonus token you get to do a bonus action on your next turn.

The final option is that you get an end game scoring card. They will give you more popcorn for the amount of movies of a color or seats of various colors, things like that.

End Of Game

Like I said, Popcorn is played over a number of rounds. At the end of the game players count up the number of points they got during the game and end game bonuses. The player with the most points is the winner of the game.

What Doesn’t Work

I think that the game feels fast. And I like that about Popcorn but I also think that means the engines you can build sometimes feel like they barely get going. Because that is what this game is, it’s an engine building game that reminds me, in some ways, of a game like Homebrewers. It’s light in terms of what it goes, but because of that, players might find that the engine doesn’t do enough for them or doesn’t run as much as they’d hope.

What Works

Now, when I talk about the negative, for me this is a positive as well. I think that Popcorn is a great game when it comes to giving people an accessible engine building game. The rules are pretty easy to learn and even easier to understand once you start and get going. But there are some fun moments of when do you pivot to getting points and when do you get money from a movie before it’s worthless to you.

I like that sliding mechanism of the movie. I didn’t explain it fully in the rules, but each round you cover up more of the bonuses for the movies. Think about it as a movie being in theaters longer. It means that fewer people are seeing it. So you need to get new movies in before a movie doesn’t have any bonuses left for you to use. It’s a good thematic mechanism that pushes you to change your engine throughout the game.

The game is also not that long. I mention it as a negative with how the engine maybe doesn’t feel like it fully gets going. But it’s a game that with turns elements happening at once, you feel like you are always involved. And maybe not a game that you’d shuffle up and play again in a night, but one that can get played more often because of those elements that happen all at once.

Who Is Popcorn For?

This is a welcoming engine building game. I think that it works well for people who play games and want that shorter engine building experience without as much overhead. But still one that is going to give you good choices. Like Homebrewers, I think with the theme I can teach a lot of the game pretty quickly and it’s a theme that people are going to like.

Final Thoughts on Popcorn

For me there is a lot to like about the game. There are interesting moves to make, there is a theme that is really working with the game. And the engine building is light, fast, and fun. I even like how you can do elements of the game at the same time. I don’t always need to know what you’re going for. But when I stop, say I’m getting a new end of game scoring card, I can see if I can figure out what you’re going for.

The big challenge for me about this game is that I don’t know when to flip between getting money versus getting points. Sometimes I realize that I have no money for a round and you get stuck doing not much. and if the movies don’t give you a lot of money, it’s an issue. But it is part of the strategy of the game. And while it might mean a dud turn, or maybe even a less than ideal game, the game is quick.

My Score: 8
Casual Score: 7.5
Gamer Score: 7.5
Luck: 4 out of 10
Strategy: 6 out of 10

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