Reputation Review

Reputation has players competing to become the most reputable CEO of their company. Each player will control a random CEO and company. Each round, a public sector and private sector card will be flipped over and players will take turns bidding on them. You don't bid with money, however. You bid with workers. In the public sector, you compete for the card and the leftover money. In the private sector, you'll get money depending on how much was carried over from the public card. When you place workers on the public sector, you'll also move money to private. Players can outbid other players or choose to stand pat. Whoever wins the cards will place the cards in front of their player boards. Then, the players next to whoever won the public sector card will be able to bid to partner with the winner. They'll be added to the card and the workers will be returned to HQ. Play continues like this for 10 rounds. After this, players will tally their points and whoever has the most will be the winner.

The Good: There's a lot of game packed into a small box here. It's a pretty straightforward auction game but because your resources are limited to your workers, you need to be careful to not run out early in the game. You won't get much return and will likely not win many bids that way. Each CEO and company has special abilities that are unique and can help you easily win some auctions if you need one.

The Okay: A strength of the game is also a weakness to it. Overspending early will guarantee you won't have a good time. Bidding games are a challenge to teach to players including myself. Most players tend to overanalyze how much they should spend or if the return is worth it. This is my experience at least.

The Not So Good: Thematically, the game is right in its wheelhouse. CEOs competing for projects. Unfortunately, the game and theme didn't really click with me. Bidding games tend to be really tense or just kind of meh and Reputation fell in the meh category for me. Don't get me wrong, there are some really interesting concepts at play here but it just fell flat for my tastes.

Final Thoughts: Reputation is an auction game that can be played in a relatively short amount of time. It ultimately didn't click with me and that's okay. Not every game will but if a fast playing auction game sounds like your cup of tea then by all means check it out and support a smaller publisher.

Thanks to Ninja Star Games for providing a review copy.