The Game Preserve

The Cheapass Catalog

Below is a list of every Cheapass Game currently in the Game Preserve. It’s not a complete list, but we are working on it.

Many of these games are available as PDF download, print-and-play. You may purchase the PDFs from the shop, or you can download the exact same files for free. It’s your choice, so please support us if you can, and please enjoy the games either way.

Cheapass Card Games

• Agora (2002): Build a sprawling marketplace in this uniquely grid-free tile game.

• Before I Kill You, Mister Spy (1996): You’re a super-villain trapping spies and taunting them for points.

  • Spy Games Product Page

• The Big Cheese (1998): Rats who are corporate vice presidents bid on projects with their employees’ time.

• Bleeding Sherwood (1996): Sell garbage to newly-rich poor people in this very historical bidding game.

• BRAWL (1999): A real-time card game that plays in less than a minute. Now with 12 decks including Juniors and Seniors.

• Cube Farm (2002): An abstract tile game about office planning, from the Hip Pocket Games series.

• Fight City (1999): It’s a city, and they fight. A constructible card game with the bare minimum of cards.

• FALLING (1998): Everyone is falling, and the goal is to hit the gound last, in the original real-time card game.

  • FALLING Product Page

• Get Lucky (2014): The Kill Doctor Lucky card game: Faster, smaller, and this time with motives!

• Girl Genius: The Works: A cever puzzle game based on the comic series by Phil Foglio.

  • Girl Genius: The Works Product Page

• Give Me the Brain (1996): Zombies must do their jobs at a fast food restaurant with only one brain to pass around.

• Light Speed (2003): Real-time space-fight card game by James Ernest and Tom Jolly.

  • Light Speed Product Page

• Lord of the Fries (1998): Zombies must make fast food combos with hands of random ingredients.

  • Lord of the Fries Product Page

• Meat on Swords (2026): A new Friedey’s Game set at a Brazilian steakhouse.

  • Lord of the Fries Product Page(Home of Meat on Swords)

• Nexus (2001): Abstract tile game about nexuses and nodes, doing the connecting thing.

• Pairs (2014): A “New Classic Pub Game” with more than 30 variant games.

  • Pairs Product Page

• Renfield (1999): Gravediggers try not to eat too many bugs in this unique gambling trick-taking game.

• Secret Tijuana Deathmatch (2005): A quirky card game about Mexican wrestling promoters.

• Starbase Jeff (1998): A tile-based game of deep-space construction and unbridled free enterprise.

• TimeLine (2003): A strategy tile game about changing the time stream and making a profit.

• Unexploded Cow (2001): Mad cows in England meet unexploded bombs in France in this original Cheapass edition

• The Very Clever Pipe Game (1996): It’s a puzzle card game with great strategy, and yes, it’s very clever.

Cheapass Board Games

• Ben Hvrt (1996): Recruit drivers, build chariots, and compete in a series of cartoonish chariot races.

• Bitin’ Off Hedz (1997): Prehistory is hot and dull, so you’re racing your dinosaur friends into the volcano.

  • Bitin’ Off Hedz Product Page

• Button Men (1999): A strategy dice game with more than 200 characters. Board Game? Maybe. Fun? Yes.

  • Button Men Product Page

• Captain Park’s Imaginary Polar Expedition (2002): A board game about would-be adventurers who never leave London

• Devil Bunny Games (1998, 2001): He needs a ham, he hates the Earth. Devil Bunny is complicated.

• The Doctor Lucky Ambivalence Pack (2005): Four expansion boards for Kill- and Save Doctor Lucky

• Enemy Chocolatier (2006): A sleek little Euro-game about chocolate, sugar, nuts, and love.

• Escape from Elba (1999): You’re Napoleon, and so is everyone else, building weapons from letters to escape an asylum.

• Freeloader (2002): The best things in life belong to other people. Borrow them with shameless abandon.

• Get Out (1998): Get a job, get an apartment, get a life, and move out of your parents’ basement. Those were the days.

• The Great Brain Robbery (2000): Zombies attack a speeding train full of brains. Or rather, “people.”

• Huzzah! (1997): You’re a performer at a renaissance festival, where the director and the audience don’t agree on anything.

• Jacob Marley, Esq. (2004): Become Jacob Marley’s friend for life, by lending his money to Dickensian London

  • Jacob Marley Product Page

• Kill Doctor Lucky (1996): The one that started it all: Hunt a very old lucky old man in his sprawling country estate.

  • Doctor Lucky Product Page

• One False Step for Mankind (2003): Gold Rush politicians race to the Moon in this sprawling game of enterprise.

• Parts Unknown (1999): Sell body parts to mad scientists in Frankenstein’s home town in this weird economic game.

• Save Doctor Lucky (2000): The ship is sinking; go down in history as the one who gave the old man your life jacket!

• Spree! (1996): A bunch of teenagers rob a shopping mall at midnight.

• Tak: A Beautiful Game (2016): A classic style abstract game based on the works of Patrick Rothfuss

  • Tak Product Page

• US Patent No. 1 (2001): Build a time machine, whenever you want, and then race to the day the patent office opens.

• Witch Trial (2001): Unsavory lawyers persecute free thinkers and vegetarians at a previous dark time in history.

  • Witch Trial Product Page

Cheapass Anthologies

• The Cheapass Games Poker Suite (2011): Fourteen original games with a standard poker deck.

  • Abandon Ship

  • Barcelona

  • Boneyard

  • Brain Baseball!

  • Caribbean Star

  • Following Suit

  • Hey, Bartender!

  • Spots

  • Lamarckian Poker

  • Last Man Standing

  • The Lost Pueblo of Doctor Green

  • Seven-Handed Poker

  • Penniless and Insane

  • Willow

• Chief Herman’s Holiday Fun Pack (2000): A collection of 24 small games from Cheapass ads, catalogs and so forth.

  • Dice Games

    • Bogart

    • Crash

    • Flip

    • Dogfight

    • Pennywise

    • Road Trip

  • Card Games

    • Spots

    • El Paso

    • Hey, Bartender!

    • Following Suit

    • Last Man Standing

    • Brain Baseball!

  • Bluffing Games

    • Big Dumb Five

    • The Lost Pueblo of Doctor Green

    • Candy

  • Board Games

    • Galaxy

    • The Celebrated Jumping Frog Game

    • Stumpy the Cave Boy

    • Tishai

  • Paper Games

    • Strange Words

    • WoRDWeRX

    • Divide and Conquer

  • Group Games

    • The Con Game

    • Love and Marriage

• Chief Herman’s Next Big Thing (2003): A collection of 20 more small games, some slightly meatier than in Pack 1.

  • Dice Games

    • Fight the Power

    • Ten-Die Poker

    • Break the Bank

    • Monster Builder

  • Card Games

    • Penniless and Insane

    • Seven-Handed Poker

    • Darwinian Poker (AKA Lamarckian Poker)

    • Caribbean Star

    • Short Bus to Paradise

    • Headless in Seattle

    • Shipwreck! (AKA Abandon Ship!)

    • Particle Stream

    • King of the Beach

  • Board Games

    • Castle Games: Putwoody’s, Nickie’s, and Herman’s Castle

    • Dungeon Crawl

    • Hotel Transylvania

    • Queensland

    • Graveyard Shift

    • Board Game Project #55

    • Land Grab (AKA Yours or Mine)

  • Pocket Billiards Variants

    • Magic Hate Ball

    • Wild Bill

    • One Ball (Hate Ball Solitaire)

  • Unplayable Games (humor)

    • Pontifuse, an Original Game by James Ernest

    • The Establishment of the Industrial Proletariat, by Chief Herman (Excerpt)

Believe it or not, that’s not the entire Cheapass catalog. You’ll also find some free games linked from the Ready Room: games like Pennywise and Queensland, that require nothing but rules, and parts you already have.

If there’s a game you’d like to see added to this list, please let us know!