I first read about this game 40minutes before the launch and so 38 minutes later I was sitting there hitting the F5 button to see nothing was happening…. Now if any of the readers have heard about Monopoly City Streets they will probably be aware their servers fell over for the first few days (ref). I spent many a time looking at a CentOs screen saying the server was down for maintenance. When the game came back up it was too slow to play, their appeared to be a lot of hype all around the world and I was not certain it could live up to it.
However when the game was finally running live and able to cope with the demand I was pretty impressed.
The aim of the game is simple, become a property tycoon. Easier said then done, however with all the worlds roads up for grabs there are always places for new players to start.
One of the many types of house you can buy
Using the Google Map API the to generate the map data the player can select the road they wish to buy and then double click on it. After the road has been bought the player can choose to build houses or expand the number of streets he controls. The houses increase the rent from each street by the road can only contain so many houses. You begin with 3 000 000 Monopoly dollars and at the start or each day you receive your rent from the properties you own. You also occasionally get Chance Cards after completing a transaction. These can allow you to place hazards on your opponents streets or remove hazards from your own. When a street has a hazard on it no rent can be collected.
A hazard stopping me collecting rent
Help is always on hand. But he does feel like a MS PaperClip
There is always a helpful little Monopoly Man there to lend you advice. However I found him far too much like the PaperClip from MS Office.
If you have a spare few minutes give the game a go. Its one of the more innovative web based games I’ve seen for a while and its fairly simple to play.
http://www.monopolycitystreets.com/game.html#en
