[GDS] July 2011 "Europoly" - Critiques

1) Monopoly – Neighborhoods
Descent interpretation: players gather different kinds of resources, and spend them to buy properties. I like how players would need to travel to different areas to get different resources, however I didn’t like how it seemed like they had no control over where they went. If a player really needed to collect different types of resources, this could get frustrating, unless I misunderstood something. Does a player get control over when he leaves one area, or is it only when he lands on a space touching a street? One other thing I was confused about, would each player have their own board, or would each player share boards? If they own their own board, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of player-interaction. I was also a little confused by the point of the pipeline. Is it just a way for players to cycle buildings that they don’t want?

2) Majority
My game.

3) Magnate
3 votes
Overall, this was my favorite, just because this, more than any other game, felt like Euro-Monopoly. Impressive images. You really went all out on this one. I thought that the role choice was a neat addition, especially how you included Chance cards in there. I also liked the end and victory conditions, it felt true to the original Monopoly, but updated. I was a little confused about why everyone would receive a penalty if one person went to jail, but otherwise things seemed very clear. I didn’t particularly like the limitation on trading, it seems like anyone who wants to trade should be able to get what they can, rather than being limited to trading for 2 values higher (unless I misunderstood it, and I could force a player to trade with me).

4) Monepolis
2 votes
This was an interesting take on Monopoly, that I think stayed fairly true to it. The movement mechanic is really interesting. I’m having trouble thinking of where I have seen that before. The one problem is that you can make it possible to avoid any location that you don’t want (which would greatly drive down the value of places like Boardwalk). Also, it interacts in a slightly weird way with jail. I’m not sure what I think of the hostile takeover mechanism. Most of it seems good, except that you need other players to vote. I guess I didn’t understand thematically why people who do not own the property would get a say, and I worry that it would hurt the least-liked player. I like the deck-building mechanic, except I worry that 3 cards at the start will not be enough (especially if you get a bad one like “income tax”). I also didn’t like the end-game mechanic, since it has the old flaw of Monopoly (that it takes far, far to long for anyone to go bankrupt). Although, maybe with the new rules that will be different.

5) Europoly
Interesting idea. I was a little confused what a “share” was. Like, if I land on any dark blue property, can I buy 1 share? Or does each dark blue property have 3 shares on it? I’m also a little confused as to what #3 shares are, and how they are different from buying 3 #1 shares. I like how you managed to make the rent somewhat simple, however I think it might be problematic if owning a single property makes it so that you don’t need to pay any rent. It seems like the optimal strategy would become to just buy one property everywhere and go rent-free (it also seems like the optimal strategy is to be the first person to each place, so that you can buy things cheap). I’m also not quite sure if I understood what the actions are (although, it might be because I couldn’t see your images). Neat idea about chance cards giving extra dice, and being needed to buy new properties.

6) Modular Europoly
(Just a note: I’ve entered BGDF contests several times before, and have never playtested them before hand. The idea of this is not to give a finished game, but as clear of a description of a game idea as possible. What you have isn’t really a clear idea, just a number of ideas that you’d like to include.)
I liked how you included many more Euro-game mechanics than needed (especially multiple winning conditions and language-free board). I was a bit confused about how the movement would work, since it still seems like you have roll-and-move, it’s just slightly more controlled. Otherwise, I feel like there is not enough of a coherent game here to critique. Like, I didn’t catch how you could buy properties and such.

Also, for the future, I don’t care about this, but that much text in the figures might be a violation of the 800 word limit. I feel like they went above diagrams, and included fairly detailed rule descriptions.

7) Monopolis
1 vote
I like the role-assignment. That’s a really unusual take on this challenge. However, I’m a little concerned about how some things will work, however. I would worry that it would get really hard to get a monopoly if there is only one place that the realtor could go, and anyone can take it. Maybe it could work though, I need to think about it more.

8) Public Works
This is a really neat-sounding game. I like the under-bidding mechanism, and I like the way resources were valued based on the demand. I couldn’t vote for it though, because it didn’t really feel like Monopoly.

Simon

I was kind of disappointed that my images broke after sedjtroll posted them. We think it was because of using dropbox to share them. Might need to change the way to share images...

The images explained much of what the text did not. So I would appreciate feedback on the complete version posted here: http://www.bgdf.com/node/5128.