From the publishers homepage:
Background
It is almost a true story. The Mayor of Farum (city on the outskirts of Copenhagen) had ruled the city like a king for almost a decade. His party ruled the city board and no one dared to speak out against the Mayor. But as with Hamlet, something is rotten in the Kingdom. A Danish newspaper blew the story wide open. It turned out that the Mayor, among other things, had made some creative investments and given his friends loads of city business. To top that off, his expense account carried not only trips to Championship Football games, but also wine for more than 10,000 a bottle – Cheers…
Sales and PR
PBX was released in the beginning of November 2002, and were sold out before New Year – that made PBX: The fastest selling board game in Denmark ever. 12,000 copies sold from the shops in only 6 weeks – without a dime spent on marketing. Yet PBX was able to create heavy and very positive media coverage: The media also focused on the fact that PBX was the first of it's kind. Some articles even had politicians (the main characters in PBX) playing the game and reviewing it. National TV News gave it full coverage as Christmas Gift of the Year, including a review done by two Mayors. The second largest daily newspaper had "business" Cavling Winning (same as Pulitzer) journalists reviewing the game (BT).
Game play
As a Mayor of a Danish town, you are obsessed about making your city the best city in the country. To fulfil all the dreams you have for the city, the Game starts out with you taking an illegal loan of 250 million from the Government. Now your job as a Mayor is to drive around the game board in your Mayoral car and try to spend the money as fast as possible. On your way you pick cards with instructions on how much to spend on, for instance, "gifts " to business relations in return for favours, dinners you have to give to keep your fellow politicians on board and travels you need to make in order to do proper "research ". You have to be careful, because the people you mingle with can easily forget their obligations to you, even though the gifts you spent on them were expensive. Your political opponents (though still full from the "friendly " dinner you hosted) will try and expose you, or the Government might even call you in for a little chat that would force you on a leave of absence, where you have no chance at all of blowing your 250 million. The instruction cards, mixed with questions on luxury lifestyle, all evolve around issues that actually did take place, though blown totally out of proportion and with a humorous distance, making this the first Board Game ever to truly be appointed: A Satire Board Game.