Quick Review: Business Tour

Monopoly is still a highly popular board game today, so it only makes sense that it would exist in a quick play version.

Developed by Creobit, published by 8Floor and released on July 27th 2017, Business Tour is… well, I just said it. It’s a take on Monopoly made simpler and quicker, played through an online mode against random opponents. Some elements are changed to speed up the game or add new concepts.

It is, decidedly, one of the Monopolys of all time.

We still have the eight sets of two or three properties, and the four airports (now turned into “resort cities”). Community Chest is gone, but Chance is still there. Prison has been swapped for Lost Island, serving the same purpose. Free Parking is now a Championship space, and a player who lands on it can choose one of their properties to house said Championship, which will increase the cost of that space’s rent a lot. The Go To Jail space was swapped for World Tour, a quick plane trip to any property owned either by you or no one.

Running out of funds doesn't mean you're guaranteed to
lose; you can come back from it, but it'll be tough.

There are multiple ways to win. The game has a strict 20-minute timer; if two or more players are still standing at the end of it, the game tallies the worth of their possessions and the one with the highest total wins. A player can also win if all of their opponents go bankrupt from being unable to pay a rent, even after selling their properties to make money back. Last but not least, if a player owns all of the properties from both sets on one side OR three full sets anywhere OR all four resort cities around the board, they win by default. Other minor elements of Monopoly stay, such as getting to roll again after rolling a double (and going to jail, or “Lost Island”, if you roll three doubles in a row).

Hey, look at that - I own all of the properties on one side of
the board. I win!

The trading of properties is simplified; after paying the property of a rent owned by someone else (other than resort cities), you can repurchase it, but it will be costly. You can’t set the price or haggle. If a player runs out of money to pay a debt, they can sell back any of their properties, including resort cities, to pay the debt, or declare bankruptcy. If a player leaves the game before they’ve lost, the game keeps going with a bot replacing that player. The game comes with a variety of menus, an online mode, a way to play with friends, and even a board editor to make some games more special than others where you can choose new themes, different corner spaces, and so on.

Not everybody has time for a 3+-hour board game, so a
quick version can help get that fix without having to set up
an entire evening with friends.

Fun game, but at the end of the day, it’s still Speed Monopoly. Mechanics are changed, and it has a neat little style to it, but the overall game is recognizable underneath all the modifications. That does make it a lot more approachable and accessible, though as a result some elements ramp up the speed at which everything happens – most noticeable in the rent prices that grow much faster than in the Parker Brothers classic. Probably in an attempt to bankrupt players rapidly in the last few minutes. The added means of victory also help quite a bit in speeding up the board game we all know.

Ending the game after 20 minutes means that the end tally
of properties can reveal the real winner. I lost, and it wasn't
that close, but as the timer ended I wasn't sure who would
really win!

However, there’s a free-to-play model to this one. Playing costs 100 blue chips. It’s not a steep cost seeing as you also earn chips back for winning a game. You can use real money to get coins which you can then spend on blue chips, cosmetic changes such as character skins, different dice and even some power-ups to help you in the game, like special dice that only give an even or an odd result. On the plus side, it means that none of them are necessary to enjoy the game, and therefore your only true worry would be to run out of blue chips. Thankfully, you start out with 5,000 of them, so it’ll be a while before you need more… In Free Play, at least. You do need to fork out money for an Investor Pass if you want better rewards in the more competitive Tournament mode, however.

Business Tour is available for free on Steam.