Film Fixer

Game description from the back of the box:

"Film Fixer" is a card game based on the theme of the film industry. Each player becomes a producer of the movie, or hire the talent, we will increase the influence in the industry by creating a slush fund or been successful in investing, or making a movie variety. Rivals and won the "psychological warfare", it becomes "mastermind" who do you think true...

Game description from user:

"Film Fixer" is a 3-4 player card game based on the theme of producing movies in the film industry. Although this game was made in Japan, the company has made it bilingual (although a few of the translations are a little strange).

Each player starts with a new talent card and 8 coins. The players use coins to purchase (contract) "talent" and send the talent to "movies" to earn money and victory points.

Contents: 4 - Newcomer Cards 36 - Money Cards (9x 6 coins, 12x 3 coins, 15x 1 coins) 37 - Movie Cards (15/Talent cards, 11/QE Film cards, 11/CP Film cards) 1 - The End Card

Each turn consists of 6 phases:

1 - Investment 2 - Change 3 - Contracting 4 - Shooting 5 - Profit 6 - Replenishing

The instructions provided are a little confusing at first, but I'll do my best to try and summarize them.

The movie cards (talent and film cards) are shuffled, the END card is placed two from the bottom, and 5 cards are dealt into the play area.

1 - In the investment phase, the non-active players can invest money in what they think the active player will do. Money cards each have one of three logos on them: Yukidama Agency Corp. (for all talent cards [YA]), Qvinta Essentia Entertainment Inc. [QP] and Cosaic Pictures Inc. [CP] (the two movie companies). The invested money is placed face down until phase 5, where the non-active players find out which companies the active player has played.

2 - In the change phase, the active player can choose to pay one coin to switch out one movie card with a new one. They can do this as many times as they like as long as they have the money to do so. They do not receive change from this transaction.

3 - In the contracting phase, the active player can purchase "talent" which is then placed face up in front of them. Talent cards often have abilities that affect gameplay. Players CAN receive change from this transaction in this phase.

4 - In the shooting phase, the active player sends talent (this includes their newest "talent" card) to any film cards in the play area. They can send multiple talent cards to work on different films as long as those films are being produced by the same company (you can't send one talent card to CP and one to QE in the same turn, for example). You can also send multiple talent cards to the same film (they act as co-stars). The active player collects money and the film card (film cards go into the victory point pile). If the sent talent card has a star symbol on it, it is discarded.

5 - In the profit phase, the non-active players collect their rewards, if any, for investing wisely. For example: if Player B decides to invest a "one coin" card with the CP logo on it and the active Player A sends talent to a CP film, then player B is rewarded: player B can either put the invested one coin card into their VP pile or upgrade this coin card to the next higher value coin card. If player B invested in the wrong company, that invested coin card is discarded.

6 - In the replenish phase, new movie cards are dealt into the play area until there are 5 cards again. It is now the investment phase again with the next player in turn order taking the active player role.

Once the END card is dealt, the game ends after the NEXT player's turn. Once finished, each player counts their Victory Points. The player with the most VPs is the winner. In case of a tie, the player who made the most movies wins.