Seattle-based Passport Games has announced that it has signed an agreement with Rock Paper Scissors to distribute Joshua Balvin’s Gold Rush-themed board game Fool’s Gold (MSRP $50) worldwide.  A spokesperson for Passport Games told ICv2 that the company hopes to have Fool’s Gold, which features art by Ian O’Toole out by Thanksgiving.
 
Designed for 3-5 players (ages 12 and up), Fool’s Gold takes place during the California Gold Rush of 1849 with players acting as investors who send prospectors out to find gold at various locations.  Each location has its own perils, gems, quantities of gold, and bountiful supplies of silt.  As players remove the "gold cards," silt cards are more prevalent and gold becomes harder to find.  Each player begins with the same allotment, six coins and 2-4 prospectors.  The game takes five rounds to play and each round has three phases, a prospecting phase, a mining phase, and a winter phase. 
 
After the fifth round players compare what they have found, and players who fail to realize any gold from a mine lose points.  Players have to throw out all the gold from their best-producing mine, because it was "fool’s gold."  Players then sum up the totals from their remaining mines and add in the scores for any gems they have found.  The player with the most points wins.
 
This is just the latest board game announcement from Passport, which recently announced two other sophisticated board games that it plans to distribute in Q4, 2013, Quantum (see "Passport Nabs 'Quantum' Board Game"), and Venezia (see "Passport Games to Distribute 'Venezia'").