Comments on: Star Wars Monopoly: The Thing That Should Not Be

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 29 Jan 2016 00:03:13 +0000

I remember playing The London Game with Tim a long time ago, and what bothered me most was not being allowed to nip off the south edge of the board to a handy junction I knew existed in the real world.

Yes I agree there are many better games than Monopoly. I still have the set my patents bought when i was small, but probably won’t bother teaching my sons to play it. Yet my wife bought us a puffin and a tiger to use as our personal pieces in the game. (Saves so much argument about who gets the racing car.)

Cluedo? Yes, though without the summoning rule.
The Business Game (aka Mine a Million)? Yes.
Ratrace and probably Go for Broke too.
But probably not Risk, which again takes too long especially if you are eliminated early.

By: Tim Hall

Tim Hall — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:09:02 +0000

I remember that game from a long, long time ago. Could occasionally be frustrating because it was so random; if you were trying to get someone the other side of the board, you’d always be diverted to so many random other places before you actually got there.

By: John P.

John P. — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 22:52:04 +0000

We’ve been playing The London Game (a game from my youth) over Christmas. You travel round the underground visiting a series of locations with various hazards when you change lines. Simple rules that even my 8 year old and her friends can grasp but needs quite a bit of thinking as they plan a route across the network. They enjoyed it enough to want to play again.

By: Tim Hall

Tim Hall — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 20:24:43 +0000

Designing a really good family boardgame is a lot harder than designing a good hobby game. The rules need to be short and simple enough to be able to learn quickly and memorise so you don’t have to keep referring to them in play. And it has to remain playable when there are players with varying ability at the table, otherwise it will suck badly if you’re the youngest child in the family.

By: Synthetase

Synthetase — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 16:24:58 +0000

First thing I thought, too. Why would you complain about this one character being absent when you should be asking ‘who the hell asked for a Star Wars monopoly game in the first place?’

The monopoly end-game completely sucks. It’s an obvious death spiral and we all know who’s going to win, it just takes forever to actually get there.

I love Settlers of Catan. To me it’s the perfect mix of strategy, trading and random number generators.

By: Amadan

Amadan — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 05:21:31 +0000

In fairness, if you play Monopoly with the actual rules as written (every property goes up for auction if the player landing on it doesn’t buy it, and you can make deals, no money on Free Parking, etc.) then it’s not such a terrible game. Though still not a very good one.