• Game: Karnaxis
• Publisher: Opportunity Games
• Designer: Andrew Schauerhamer
• Genre: Economic
• Players: 1-6
• Playtime: 60-120 minutes



• What's Hot: Novel “real life” concept with lots of detail and narrative; fun economic system that rewards self-realization and financial independence; easy to play but provides a host of strategic options



• What's Not: Poor graphic design; some balance/pacing issues; stock market mechanic doesn’t allow for meaningful speculation

by: Michael Barnes

Karnaxis might sound like the name of yet another fantasy board game setting, but it’s actually a neologism defined as a “life goal”. It’s also the title of Andrew Schauerhamer’s first design published through his DIY Opportunity Games and if his Karnaxis was to design a competent and compelling economic game, then he can consider it met. Although its mechanical syntax is steeped in worker placement, indirect competition, and efficiency planning, Karnaxis emerges almost as a sort of anti-Eurogame wherein the players’ goal is one of self-realization, wealth accumulation, and financial independence rather than working to impress an authority figure, participate in a market environment, or to improve a community or its infrastructure. It also takes a few cues from adventure board games in its focus on individual characters and statistics and improving them over the course of the game to meet requirements.

Karnaxis is a game where self-improvement means taking out a loan to go to college to increase your Handiness and Aptitude, not in killing an orc and getting a +1 sword and a bump to your Magic and Dexterity. There are no elves or necromancers. Instead there’s Sara, who wants to save for her retirement and math wiz Adam who wants to start an accounting firm. There’s a deck of 16 more character cards, each with a different skill set and Karnaxis. It’s not unlike the old ambition-driven Careers game in this respect, and there are definitely some echoes of Life- minus the idyllic, linear path that games offers.

Each player takes control of the fiscal fortunes of one of these characters as they emerge from high school and the safety of parents’ insurance. Over the course of the 12 round game (scaled as years), players get two actions per turn from a rather larger menu of them to try to increase income, hold down menial jobs, pay taxes, save money, and work toward opening and growing businesses. There is a dice-driven, highly volatile stock market where fortunes can be won and lost, odd analogues of Chance and Community Chest event cards, and the opportunity to franchise other players’ businesses.

The level of detail is surprisingly high, much more so than Eurogames of comparable rules weight. If you’re really making bank, you might have to make some tax-deductible donations and hire an accountant to get you into a more favorable tax bracket but then you’ve got to pay his fee annually to keep him. Some of the event cards interact thematically with specific jobs, and players have to spend a valuable action each turn in order to stay employed- which may cost opportunities elsewhere. It’s worth paying an insurance premium to keep from getting hit by negative event cards, and you’ve always got to somehow have some money to squirrel away for retirement.

It’s all shockingly realistic in how everything works together. The design is exceptionally well-considered in terms of driving home its theme as well as in forwarding a particularly effective message of self-reliance, independence, and making your own money through enterprise rather than working for others. On the surface, Karnaxis doesn’t sound like a particularly interesting game because there’s nothing fantastic or thrilling about it and it’s all very “real world”. Yet I’ve been really fascinated by how the game’s business model promotes the “economics of the self”, wherein the individual rather than an organization is the source of wealth. There is definitely narrative- but it’s a narrative about working through school as a hairdresser to get the skills needed to become a rocket scientist rather than pulpy, genre fare.

Overall, it’s a tight design but there are a couple of distinct rough spots. I think the stock market mechanic, although interesting, is fundamentally screwed up because it moves up and down at the whim of a -2 to +2 die roll. There is no meaningful way to speculate and all businesses are just as likely to bottom out as they are to top out even if a player is dumping tons of money into marketing and growing the business. That said, investing heavily in a company that bumps up just one spot can be lucrative, it’s just that there’s no way to make a smart decision about who’s company to put your investment tokens into. It’s really more of a gamble than playing stocks seriously actually is. I really like investing in other player’s companies, the game just needs some mechanic whereby stock value is a function of business growth and relative success.