Monopoly Tycoon

The world famous Monopoly game has been transferred into a new incarnation for your mobile phone; Monopoly Tycoon.

Like the board game, all the familiar street names are found on this game, but that’s virtually where all the similarities end. Of course the name of the game is what the objective is – to make yourself rich and eliminate the competition but unlike rolling dice and moving around the board collecting cards to build up your empire, you must be much more clever and savvy with your limited budget to risk being the one eliminated!

There are four difficult games to improve your entrepreneurial prowess; auction all properties, play to £100,000, most monopolies and play to £1,000,000. In ‘auction all properties’ your objective is simply to be the player with the highest profit by the time the last property is auctioned. At the beginning round you and your three opponents are assigned random squares and £15.000 to spend either on a toy shop, café, nightclub, restaurant, department store, theatre. You have to decide the right business for the area, its size, quality and the price of the items sold. For those who really like to tweak and modify things to get every penny then this will certainly be entertaining, but fear not - for those who just like the pretty blue building more than the pretty pink one, this still will be fine also! Once you’ve secured a monopoly (you’ve got all streets in the set) you will be able to build hotels – which I’ll touch on a bit later.

The ‘play to £100,000’ game is certainly a little harder to get to grips with, as with the other level, it’s quite short and you have to make sure you work out the most lucrative opportunities to your advantage. Whether it’s bidding carefully to gazump your opponent, building the biggest and best business empire in that area, or just being cheap and cheerful, you will have to use your skill and judgement to ensure you get the money and to make it count.

‘Most monopolies’ is certainly more suited for a veteran player of the game as there are subtleties you will pick up through practicing on the other games. Ultimately you have to have as many sets of streets. This is quite a tricky balance to make as firstly, you have to generate enough money to bid on the ones you are collecting and try to not be out-bided in the auction, and also it’s not as simple as it could be due to the random factor of auctioning squares!

If you’re looking for a longer game, then definitely the ‘play to £1,000,000’ is the game for you! As with all the other three games previously, you start out with the standard random square and the £15,000 to get yourself started with. From this you must be ruthless in picking the right business for the area and generate the money you need to succeed. It gets a lot simpler when you get to build a hotel – this is a trump card in your empire growing technique. Not only does it generate more money than the other businesses, but it also promotes more custom to your businesses in the same set which you can really bring home the advantage. One thing to remember is that you’re not the only one who can get a monopoly and your opponents will not take your threat to their enterprise lightly and will almost work together in crafty ways to ensure you lose out!

Needless to say, this is definitely for those who are fans of the Monopoly style and game. It’s a little more serious and detailed than the original game which no doubt will tempt some and deter others. For me, who has the Monopoly Tycoon game for PC, it’s very simplified and great to kill those boring minutes with.

Rating – 90%

Positives

Several tricky levels to play

Every game is different

Your score’s kept so keeps that competitive edge

Good boredom buster

Negatives

Very tiny screen/board which gets easily crowded with everyone’s building

Can’t undo your last move if eagerly skipped ahead.

Once you’ve reached the tipping point, it’s an easy win from there

Should have had more shops to pick from

Doesn’t get more difficult