Get Out (board game)
| Designer(s) | James Ernest |
|---|---|
| Publisher(s) | Cheapass Games |
| Players | 2 to 6 |
| Setup time | 5 minutes |
| Playing time | 60 minutes |
| Random chance | High |
| Skill(s) required | Low |
Get Out is one of the earliest board games published by Cheapass Games. Players are trying to move out of their parents' basements. They roll dice and move around the board, trying to collect jobs and apartments.
The board for Get Out is similar in concept to the board used for Monopoly, though there are three rings on the board. The first ring is primarily filled with spaces indicating jobs, the second ring indicating places for housing, and the innermost ring indicating high-life temptations.
Players start with a small amount of money and in the outermost ring. On each turn, the player rolls two dice and moves that many spaces in a clockwise direction around the board. If a player should have a job, they can move through that space to the second ring; subsequently, if the player should have a housing space, they can use that space to move through to the innermost ring. Each time around the board (indicated by the "Pay Day" space), the players earn money from their jobs, minus the cost of their rent (it is possible to have to pay the bank if you have more rent than job income); players without jobs get a small stipend from "their parents". The goal of the game is to progress around the innermost ring 4 times to succeed at 'getting out' of "the parents' basement".
While the players are within the outermost job ring, they can land on a job space. If no one yet has that job, the player can place an application for it for free (indicated by a marker for that player). If the player should land on a job space they have an application at already, they can opt to attempt take the job, on a successful roll, they get the job, and deny all other applicants there a job. However, if the roll is unsuccessful, the player must remove the application, though they immediately can apply again. A player that lands on a job space taken by another player may attempt to have that player fired from the job based on the result of a successful die roll. A player can opt to quit a job at any time, at which point the job is open again.
For each job the player has, they become limited in their movements, as to reflect the time the job takes. This is done by ignoring the highest dice values for each job taken: for example, a player with two jobs cannot use a 5 or a 6 that is rolled on the dice. Some jobs have special requirements limiting movement further but pay much better or have other bonuses with the job.
The housing ring works in a similar fashion to jobs, except that each application costs money to apply for. While there is no movement penalty for housing, this is reflected on the rent that the player pays each time around the board taken from their salary.
The innermost ring has some spaces that can be very expensive to the player, and while necessary to travel in to win the game, the strategy is to avoid traveling this ring as much as possible. By obtaining more expensive housing that is closest to the end of the ring, a player can minimize the impact the inner ring has while still achieving the win conditions.
Additional spaces allow players to draw random event cards that may be beneficial or disadvantageous to both the player that drew it and the other players, similar to Chance and Community Chest cards in Monopoly.
The song "Get Out" is featured on The Cheapass Album by Beatnik Turtle.