Monopoly Boardcrawl

MONOPOLY
BOARD CRAWL

ON-SHELF DATE

October 1, 2024

PROJECT ROLE

Game Designer

I was brought onto this project late when the existing game designer needed to take a leave of absence. The goal of this item was to directly compete with the game Drinkopoly and replace it at Walmart with our own Monopoly drinking game. At the time I joined, leadership was asking for the game to "feel" more like Monopoly and less like the Drinkopoly competitor game.

CONCEPT

This game originally mimicked the Drinkopoly competitor item by including all the content on the board. Players rolled the dice, moved their token around the board, and performed the action on the board space. While the board still visually looked like a Monopoly board, the game was missing key Monopoly elements including money, properties, and opportunities for scheming.

In order to make this game feel more like Monopoly, I aimed to introduce as many classic Monopoly components as possible. Considering this was a drinking game, complicated actions like auctioning, buying houses/hotels, and counting money wouldn't compliment the rest of the gameplay.

Changes included moving all the content from the board to double-sided property cards, making the board cleaner and doubling the content available in the game. Instead of money that would require a lot of counting, currency was replaced with "sips" to tie in the drinking theme. Finally, the end-game condition was changed to be once all players had moved their token around the board once, making a historically long game much shorter to suit the intended audience.

TESTING

This concept went through two rounds of Funlab testing where families played the game while the team watched. This allowed us to receive real-time feedback from consumers as they learned and played the game for the first time. Players found the updated game to feel more close to core Monopoly, and in a direct comparison to Drinkopoly they found the game more fun, more replayable, and more unique.