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Roller Coaster Tycoon - Board Game
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A board game version of the popular computer game Roller Coaster Tycoon was announced recently by Hasbro, and it appears to be a game to watch for. Due in stores for summer 2002, rated for ages 8 and up, it should sell for about $19.99.

Rob Daviau, who designs games for Hasbro, posted this description of the game on a newsgroup:

The boardgame version of RCT is a Craig Van Ness design and, in my opinion, quite good. It's "lite-German" in flavor for 2 to 4 players (plays better with more). There is a board with 29 rides and attractions on it, all unowned at the start. Players randomly get two (and have to pay for them) and mark them as theirs.

On your turn you flip an event card, which will cause any number of things to happen. You may have to bid for a new ride (auction) or even a blind auction (the ride is facedown until bidding is done). You may have an event that drives guests to food rides, water rides or thrill rides. You may get to move the "broken down" markers (there are two) or get more cash.

After you resolve the event card, you roll two dice -- one a d6, the other a d8 with 8 different colors on it. The color is the guest color and the d6 is movement. So rolling a blue-3 means you can move the blue guest exactly three spaces.

If, at the end of this movement, the guest is at an open (owned and not broken down) ride, you (as the person who moved him) get chips equal to the thrill value of the ride (1 to 4). The person who owns the ride also gets chips for owning the ride. So if you move a guest to a 2-chip attraction that you own, you would get 4 chips (2 for moving the guest, 2 for owning the ride).

In the event deck are also cards that move a month counter. When the last month is reached, the game is over. Players score 1 for every chip they have and 1 for every $100,000 they have.

So paying a lot for good rides will give you a good chance to score high chips. Conversely, paying little for rides will score you big at the end since you have hoarded your money ($100,000 is the lowest denomination, you could have millions, which would be 20-30 points).

There are a few other tricks and goodies but that is the idea. Plays in about 45 minutes for 4 players.



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