Northgate’s excited to announce the launch of The King's Game - a game of strategy, risk, trust, cooperation - and potential betrayal.
It’s short, easy to run and packed with great lessons: How can trust be nurtured? Does fear change behaviour? Why is information power? And why do we find it so hard to cooperate?
Teams have been captured by an evil king. He's forcing them to play the game. The rules are simple. The stakes are not - the team with the lowest score loses their heads! There’s a way out of the dilemma – but will teams find it? And even if they do, can they trust each other or will self-interest win out in the end?
It sounds dramatic. It is. And that's exactly why it works.
How it works
Four teams, six rounds. Each round, every team plays one counter from a set of six - the outcome is scored using a Payoff Chart covering every combination. The team with the lowest score loses.
Four reds scores +50 each - safe, equal, cooperative. But three reds and a blue flips the game: the blue team wins big, and the reds lose out. The last team to play holds the power - help everyone, or go for broke. And if they go for broke, does trust survive into the next round?
To stop teams 3 and 4 exploiting their positional advantage (they see what's already been played), the playing order rotates every round.
No talking. Teams cannot communicate.
Second play: same game, new rules. Play it again - this time with communication allowed. Does the outcome change? Does knowing what happened last time change how people negotiate now?
Also included: Business First! Two games in one!
Included as a digital extra, Business First!
The same mechanics, reframed for the boardroom instead of the dungeon - same dilemmas, same betrayals, now dressed as market share, budgets, and quarterly targets. Same lessons, corporate reputations at stake.
Find out more here.
