The designer/publisher of the game contacted me via email and invited Halesowen Boardgamers to review the game. When it arrived I was surprised to see a copyright date of 1999 on the box; it has been around for some time.
First impressions: the box is sturdy, red coloured with attractive graphics and easily holds all the components. The layout and presentation is nice; the board is laminated and lies flat, the spaces are clear, well defined and not cluttered. Pieces are wooden, triangular, possible a house roof or a sales graph? There are five decks of cards, plus two Cunning cards and two Gazumping cards per player. Cards are on the thin side but don’t really require constant handling so should stand up to repeated plays quite well. I didn’t like the suggested idea of cutting the Bonus cards to attach to the relevant properties as the cut edges could fray easily; it was easy just to slip the card under the property. Cash is a good size to handle, easily stands out and is of ‘useful’ denominations.

Rules: Clear, relatively easy to explain, with most of it being sorted when someone landed on a square. There were a few queries. It wasn’t initially very clear what the inner track did or how you got to it, maybe this could have done with its own heading/ section?

The various methods of ending the game are a nice touch; we set our first game at Victory Level D (200,000 in cash & properties with a minimum of 5 properties) or highest net worth after 1 hour of play.

The game play: A victory level is agreed on (most cash after 1 hour, reach a pre-determined property level etc.) Then, in turn, throw 1d6 and move clockwise that number. Follow instructions for the square landed on. Each square is fully explained in the rules but is fairly intuitive. Examples are: Buy property: turn over top deed, buy it if you can and want; otherwise put it at bottom of deck, Throw again (as it says), Collect Rent 10%: this is how you make money out of the properties you own. Land here, you get 10% of their total value, Sell Property for 100% profit on its current value. Other squares mean you take Disaster cards (not good news), Expenses cards (pay money, usually, but not always, based on the properties you own) and Golden Opportunities (usually good, including taking Bonus cards that increase the value of one of your properties by either 100% or 200%).

There is an inner track on the board called Property Boom, works like the outer track but all values are doubled. It wasn’t initially clear how you got on to this track but we solved it in the end.

Player interaction is limited; mainly comprising buying property off someone if they need or want to sell. One square is Sell by Blind Auction but it’s not really an auction, everyone throws the die and the highest roller gets the option to buy. The one true piece of interaction is the Gazumping cards. When someone is buying off an estate agent; anyone can play a Gazumping card and get the property for 10% over the sale price. Another player can Gazump them for 20% and so on. In all cases, the player at the Estate agent gets all the cards played!

The Cunning cards allow a 50% reduction on any payments (especially the Divorce square; lose 50% of your assets). Ouch! Another square lets you get back a played Cunning card.

So, how did it play? Our first game was myself, my son Ben (9), my daughter Lisa (19) and her boyfriend Jon (20). Ben started by finding practically every Disaster card he could; the rest of us acquired properties and money steadily until Jon lost most in a messy divorce (even after using a Cunning card). I had several low value properties; Lisa had two very good ones. Ben had two properties and managed to stay in the game without a loan or going bankrupt due to getting a good property cheap and selling it at a good profit. At the end of the hour, Jon won with 155,000 in cash (but no properties), Lisa was second with 137, 000; I was third with 135,000 and Ben tailed in with 124,000.

Opinions: We all enjoyed the game, short though it was. There were a few rule queries that I e-mailed to Andrew (the designer); I understand that these will be clarified in the next printing of the rules.

Overall: Is it a ‘gamer’s’ game? Well, if you’re looking for something the depth of Caylus , Puerto Rico, or Aquire, then I have to say no, it isn’t. What it is, though, is a nice family game. Unlike Monopoly, where the object is to eliminate your opponents, in Propertunity, everyone can play to the end. A time limit can be set (there are several suggested game-end conditions), so even young children can play (with their notoriously short attention span). It’s the sort of game you would take on holiday and sit playing in a caravan on a wet day. That’s what I intend to do.

Further details can be found on the website www.Propertunity.com.