Stan came over for dinner last night. I was stuck on a 3-hour conference call until about 6, so by the time I got downstairs I discovered Katherine had already wangled him and Margie into a game of Operation and a game of Disney Princess Monopoly Jr., which she’d received as a gift over Christmas.
Color me impressed. The game not only works well for kids, it’s a solid scaling-down of the “real” Monopoly game.
- The board is about half-sized, and the color blocks are two properties in width. To go with that, you roll a single die.
- Rents are all in single digit numbers, from $1 to $5, simple numbers that kids can add. By the same token, since you end up using “Monopoly money,” kids have to add up the bills that will buy something or pay the rent.
- Properties are bought automatically when landed on. If you can’t buy a property, you can’t make the move. If you buy a property, you get a castle put on it. No multiple houses/hotels.
- Chance cards let you move to a property and (often) buy it for free. If someone else already owns that property, you get to take it from them — unless they own both of the color block.
- The non-property squares are simple “roll again” or “pay a few bucks” (which then can be recovered by the player who lands on the “loose change” corner square).
- The tokens are all Disney princesses, and the properties are all matched pairs of Disney characters.
And that’s it. Aside from that, it plays very much like Monopoly, and the mechanics are simple enough for a 5-year-old to master, while keeping the adults dragooned into playing entertianed. There’s not much strategy — you really don’t get any choices in the game, bottom line — but it’s still fun, and it will serve as a gateway to the Real Thing eventually.
It gets a thumbs-up from the Consortium.
Coooool.