Burnout

Burnout is a semi-cooperative real-time game for 2–5 players played in exactly three minutes. Players are a team delivering a project under a deadline, competing for an individual promotion while cooperatively trying to achieve at least a C grade on the group project.

A single opaque bag contains Green tokens (worth 3 points), Yellow tokens (worth 1 point), and Red tokens (stress), with the composition scaled to player count. On each turn, players choose one action: Work (draw a token from the bag), Rest (remove stress tokens), Delegate (move a stress token to another player), Support (remove stress from another player), or Overtime (draw twice). Play is sequential and clockwise, with the real-time timer creating constant pressure.

Accumulating 3–4 Red tokens makes a player Stressed, causing them to discard any Green tokens they draw and preventing them from using Support. At 5+ Red tokens, a player enters Burnout, immediately losing 3 tokens from their Work Area.

When the timer expires or the bag empties, individual scores are tallied and combined into a group grade. The highest individual scorer earns the Promotion, but only if the group achieves a C grade or higher. If the group fails, nobody is promoted regardless of individual performance.

—description from the designer