WarYore
Chad   Dongguan, Guangdong, China
 
 
Chad is a gamer who plays games. He enjoys video games.
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Workshop Showcase
There are a number of games you can play with a Half Checkerboard (4 x 8). There are a list of 32 on BoardGameGeek, complete with rules: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/67989/games-games-half-checkerboard-series Most just use Checkers and/or Chess piece
2 ratings
Created by - WarYore
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Review Showcase
10.5 Hours played
For Mega-Fans of Monopoly

If you like really like Monopoly, get this game. If your interest in Monopoly is casual (or worse) - pass. 6.5 out of 10 "Get out of Jail Free" Cards.

TL:DR - The inclusion of 3 game variants is great, the history features are nice, and Anti-Opoly itself is a neat take on the theme - but the graphical and audio presentation is lazy and very lacking, and there are a lot of missing features like custom difficulty levels and house-rules.

Special note: This is, as far as I know, the only way to play the Original "Quaker" version of Monopoly digitally. Yes, Monopoly is older than 80 years - and pre-dates Charles Darrow's version. Being able to play the Quaker version made this a must-purchase for me. Too bad there is no explanation of the rules for Quaker-opoly included in this game. Actually, it seems to me that this version plays exactly like Monopoly™. It's just slightly reskinned.

Pros

3 forms or game-play:
  • Anti-Opoly (Also known as Antimonopoly, or just Anti in the real-world board game edtion)
  • Original-Opoly (aka Monopoly - the world-famous / infamous board game that causes fights)
  • Quaker-Opoly (the true "original" monopoly, the version of the game that existed long before the one that got famous)

There is some history in the "Extras"
The stuff about Antimonopoly is a bit self-serving on the part of the author (the creator of the game Antimonopoly, and one who has fought lawsuits against the makers of Monopoly™) . But - the parts about how Monopoly™ was actually not created by Charles Darrow, and how Parker Brothers basically stole the game from the true creator are accurate - and pretty danged interesting.

Up to Six players
Most Monopoly or -Opoly-style digital games I've played have the player cap at 4. Having 6 players makes for a more interesting game, and keeps it less likely for one person to runaway with the game right off the bat.

They color-code the properties to make it super easy to know who owns what
One of the features missing in pretty much all physical version of Monopoly and other -Opoly-style games is an easy way to see who owns what. This game color codes the properties pretty clearly after they are purchased (a "SALE" sign on the ones that have not yet been purchased) so it is very clear and easy to see at a glance.

Cons

MISSING FEATURES

* No Online Multiplayer
Only local. You know how hard it is to get 6 people to play Monopoly IRL? Still applies here.

* No AI-level control
There are no difficulty levels. There's no way to control the AI of the computer players. In fact, I can't tell if there is any difference in the computer players, or if they all have just one AI. I think that each one would make the same trade at the exact same dollar level every time. There doesn't seem to be any variation at all in the AI.

* No "House-rules" or customization
For a game with 3 different -Opoly-style games, the lack of control over things like Free Parking, starting money, collecting rent in jail, bonuses for landing on Go, etc. is just sad. These things are in every Monopoly digital game I've ever seen, except maybe ones written in the 80s or 90s. Even knock-off mobile -Opoly games have customizable rules. This is very disappointing. The only custom option is in the Anti-opoly game, where you can set the win-condition to either bankrupt everyone else, or bankrupt everyone else on the other "team" and being the richest on your team. (Anti-opoly has two groups - Monopolist and Competitors. It's complicated.)

* No Auctions
If you land on a property but don't have enough to buy it, or just don't want to buy it - you don't. That's it. There's no auction option. It doesn't open up for other players to bid on that property. This would make sense in a two-player game. But for multiple players - the auction feature speeds up the game a lot by getting the properties in people's hands faster.

* No real help
The Help page is basically copied straight from the physical board game version of Antimonopoly. It even talks about shuffling cards and placing things on the board. There is absolutely no help for Quaker-Opoly. The help for Original-Opoly is bare-bones, but at least it is there.

* No way to save yourself
Let's say you own half the board. You are the only person with a monopoly at all. You have hotels on everything from Free Parking to Go.... But you only have $5 cash. You land on Baltic Ave, which you don't own. Rent is $6. You lose the game. Period. You can't sell back any hotels, you can't mortgage any properties, you can't offer to trade with anyone.... If you don't have the cash immediately on you, it's game over. This is horrible. This is a broken game, as far as I'm concerned. It is simply not the way any -Opoly-style game is played.

Don't misunderstand - trading, mortgaging, selling back property improvements... Those are all features of the game. It is just you can't do any of those things after you land on a property where you owe rent more than your cash on hand. It would be like me saying I'm richer than Bill Gates because he doesn't carry cash, and I have a $5 bill. It just doesn't make sense to claim you "Bankrupted" someone who owns half of the city because they couldn't afford your ice cream cone with the change in their pocket.

PRESENTATION

* The graphics are lazy and old-looking
This game looks cheap - like super cheap - like a port of a mobile game from 5 years ago cheap. It is really bad. It's especially sad for their treatment of the Quarker-opoly. With all the rich historic possibilities they could have gone with to create the worlds-only digital version of the original game - the board is mostly blank or just text. The format of the spaces does actually harken back to the original game, which I appreciate, but other than that, they phoned it in. It's disappointing.

* No customized skins
I know I might be reaching here - but the fact that all three games look pretty much the same (although, of course, the Anti-Opoly has the most dressed up look, since it's the supposed star of the show). The same light blue-gray colored board, the same wood-panel table background, the same uber-generic plastic colored pawns.... One of the reasons Monopoly™ has made millions and millions of dollars over the years is the fact that it can easily be themed to look like pretty much anything. The fact that this game has three virtually identical looking games inside of it is just - again - lazy.

* The music is boring and repetitive
I know you don't buy a game like this for the sound track, but you will turn the music off well before your first game is over.

* The sound effects are also meh.
The sound effects are a big loud and annoying (volume controls are provided, thankfully) - but they work. It's not horribly bad - just not very good.

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM
Anti-Opoly itself is unbalanced.

The game "help" even starts by saying:
"Ready to play? Remember, all elements in this game have been mathematically constructed to make a fair game between competitors and monopolists. If either competitors or monopolist have the best of it in the first few games you play, it's because luck is on their side - or because they are playing better."

That does not play out in reality. Unless they've drastically re-adjusted the rules of this digital version, the Monopolist always have the advantage. Even though you may not have heard of this game before now, Anti-Opoly (Anti-, Antimonopoly, etc.) has existed since the 1970s. And every review I've ever read about it says that the Monopolists statistically win far more often than the Competitors.
Hello
I'm an American who lives in China. That's weird, right?
Recent Activity
34 hrs on record
last played on 20 Nov
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Finagle 21 Apr, 2022 @ 8:54pm 
Thank you for the gift :winter2019cooldog:
QWERT 21 Apr, 2022 @ 4:15pm 
Thanks :47_thumb_up::AndreHappy::HentaiGirlLinda_like:
BP 19 Apr, 2022 @ 10:43pm 
Thanks a lot for the gift :)
cicero 2 Jan, 2020 @ 9:57am 
I hope you are still not re-educated!@#
WarYore 24 Dec, 2018 @ 8:50am 
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! It is December 25, 2018, and i am not dead or in a camp. :evotree::2015holly::2015candycane::MerryPugmas::HappyPACMAN::christmasbag::candymandy::2015cookie::betsyrossflag::ab_chineseflag:
Potentiality12 7 Jun, 2018 @ 1:08pm 
*visuals of white clouds moving serenely across a calm sky*