Making loads of moolah and fast has been something that capitalist North Americans have been pursuing for hundreds of years. It’s a tradition to try and find a way out of the drudgery of the lower classes, skipping right over relative comforts of the middle class, and going straight to the glory of the upper crust. With Lenny Herbert and FoxMind’s Get Rich Quick, you’ll have the opportunity to work within the financial system, play the odds, and you might just walk away a wealthy person worthy of the admiration and adoration of others.

GRQ is a simple, fun family game all about, you guessed it, making money. Well, actually what you’re really trying to earn is Fortune Points. The first first one to acquire 25, wins the game, but money is going to help you quite a bit along the way.

GRQ is played over a series of rounds by 3-5 players. Each person has a hand of seven cards to start the game and each round they’ll select three of those cards to be their actions for that round. Once everyone has selected their cards, you’ll flip them at the same time. Each card has a numeric value to it between one and seven and they get resolved in that order. After all of the cards have been resolved, you check to see if there’s a winner and if not, all the cards get collected and a new round starts. It’s very easy to pick up the rules and very quickly people will be able to start devising a a game plan. You’ll be able to start to guess what your opponent’s might choose to do on a round and hopefully you’ll make the right financial choices to earn yourself maximum money.

The number 1 cards are the first to be resolved, the Work cards. It’s not glamorous, but going to work will guarantee you $1000 from the bank, not too shabby for a day’s work. Playing the Penny Stocks is number 2. This is the first foray into playing the odds a bit. When you play the Penny Stocks, you pay $1000. If at least one person did NOT play the stocks, you earn $3000 back from the bank. If the entire table played the stocks then you still pay your money, but get nothing in return. Next choice is Investing in Real Estate. This is an even bigger risk. You pay $2000 and will get a return of $6000 as long as two other players didn’t play that card. Bigger risk, but bigger reward. Card 4 allows you to Launch a Start Up. This can yield huge returns, but only if the market is good. If you’re the only one to play the Start Up card you invest $3000, but get a return of $10,000. Pretty darn sweet. That’s just the reason why you have to time it right. If even one other person attempts to Launch a Start Up then your efforts are for not, and you lose your initial investment. You can play the Lottery with card 5, rolling five dice. It costs you $1000, but a three-of-a-kind or better will earn you a huge windfall, with a five-of-a-kind being worth $30,000. That’s a spicy meatball! Card 6 will let you Shop, but we’ll talk more about that in a minute. With Card 7, you can take a break and relax. It’s like skipping a turn, but it does earn you one Fortune Point.

Choosing which cards to play each round is one half of the big decisions you’re going to have to make while trying to rake in the loot. The second half is when you perform the aforementioned Shopping. The board of GRQ represents the Summit Shopping Centre. There are a number of different locations you can go to make a purchase (claiming the spot with your coloured Meeple). The available locations vary between things that will give you an advantage during gameplay or earn you immediate Fortune Points. For example hiring a Sidekick will allow you to play an extra card each turn, buying a Promotion or Major Promotion will earn you extra money every time you work, and claiming the Stars Align space will give you a re-roll of up to three dice when you play the Lottery. There are 12 different locations to make a purchase for an in game advantage, and four spaces to snag straight up Fortune Points. Many of the locations have multiple places for people to claim, but each person can only go to each spot once. It’s really fun to make a decision where to make a purchase and what combination of advantages will help you the most in the game.

Buying Fortune Points at the mall is going to be necessary if you want to have a chance at winning the game. Earning them one at a time, by taking breaks is just not going to cut it. Not when your opponents are buying them up in groups of 2, 3, 5, and 10. To do that you have to find ways to make loads of cash.

I will make one suggestion to improve the gaming experience. In the rounds that I played, we found that the High Tech Bubble Burst space you can buy at the mall was far too powerful. One person is able to snag that space for a mere $8000 and it allows you to earn Fortune Points every time a Start Up fails. That means that if even two people choose the Launch a Start Up card, the person on High Tech Bubble Burst earns a point. In our games the person holding that spot would choose it every time and everyone else had to either choose it as well, causing a fail, and pay $3000 for nothing. While the other player would also have to pay $3000, but they’d at least get a Fortune Point out of it. Far too often we’d just avoid throwing our money away and that person was free to rake in a tidy $7000 for a successful Start Up. We ended up house ruling that space out of the game and I think it flowed a lot better.

GRQ feels like an actually fun version of Monopoly. It’s tricky to anticipate what other people are going to do and the reveal of the cards is exciting. Seeing what you’re able to accomplish in a round and what attempts you made are going to go bust is a tense hilarious moment. It’s a pretty quick play and I’d definitely recommend it for families. At your next gathering if you’re with a group that defaults to grabbing Monopoly off the shelf, have them give GRQ a shot. It plays way faster, still has some take-that elements, and it’s super easy to learn.