Go To Jail

One of my all time favorite games is Monopoly. When the Monopoly clone Go To Jail by Neil Pollard came out for the Palm last year I was really excited. But I was disappointed in the game play and reluctantly decided not to keep it. When the Monopoly urge hit hard last week I decided to give Go To Jail another chance.

Go To Jail supports up to four players represented by card suits. You can supply a name for each player and specify whether it is a human or Palm player (only supported in the registered version).

The game board is very similar to the standard Monopoly board. Each monopoly represents a different country; its properties cities within that country. Instead of railroads Go To Jail has airports and the Channel Tunnel acts like Free Parking (and can be found between the French and English monopolies). Luck cards and Finance cards replace Chance and Community Chest. Almost all of the squares have the same monetary value as monopoly, although a few squares are slightly different.

The square names and values are shown in the middle of the board as each game piece moves through them. This works pretty well, but leads to slower game play during long turns, especially when a "go to property x" card is drawn. Rents, income, card actions, and jail rolls all appear in message boxes.

The Property|View Groups menu item shows the owner of each property one monopoly at a time. From this window you can also view the details of a specific property, basically a list of rents.

There are a few differences in game play. The biggest one is that Go To Jail does not support mortgaging or selling properties, houses, or hotels. If you run out of cash, you lose the game. Also, there is no mechanism for trading properties, so many games never have either player gain a monopoly.

Landing on Channel Tunnel (Free Parking) results in no action. Although technically accurate according to the official rules, most people I know either pay a lump sum everytime or pay out all monies collected by the bank. An option would be nice. Likewise, a $100 bonus for snake eyes and extra $200 for landing exactly on the Start square would also be nice options. Most electronic Monopoly games I've seen support at least two of these three options.

I found the combination of not being able to mortgage properties and the slowness of play really impeded my enjoyment of the game.

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