Back again to teach us the importance of stripping the world of its natural resources and creating an unsustainable business model are the minds behind Monopoly, with their new game, "Hotels". And by new, I mean it's from 1974, but I've always been of the opinion that if it's something you've never seen, then it's new to you, so. Hotels is a pretty basic and straightforward concept, overall. You construct an empire of hotels to bankrupt your opponents so you can continue your stranglehold on the market with no interference from anyone else. It's for 2-4 players, ages eight and up, and a game can run for 90 minutes. A brief description from Board Game Geeks reads as thus:
Players try to buy and build the best hotels in this game, earning the most money or bankrupting their opponents. A successful hotel consists of three components: the land on which it's built, the hotel buildings, and the entrances by which guests arrive in the hotels. All three components need to be bought separately with in-game money. As in Monopoly, money is earned by players who end up on one of the entrances of your hotels, after their dice roll. The more luxurious the hotel, the more money a guest will earn you. Money you can use to build extensions to your existing hotels, buying new entrances or pay other players when you arrive at their hotels.
According to the way this game works, hotels are put together like Ikea furniture. It really is just taking the concept of the hotel from Monopoly and applying it it to an entire game in and of itself, and frankly, I think it kinda waters it down really. The whole point of the hotels in Monopoly was that it was something you built up to, it was the way to really destroy the other players monetarily, yet here it's just...it's the whole game. That being said, I'm sure it's still fun.
The game - these days known as Hotel Tycoon - was originally released in 1974, designed and artistically crafted by Denys Fisher, who, and I'm not even kidding you, is the man who invented the Spirograph (of which a blog post over at my sister blog Toy Vey can be read right here!) and really, the unique thing about it is the set pieces on the board. Unlike Monopoly, which just has tiny red versions of the plastic green homes to represent the hotels, Hotels has actual 3 dimensional markers placed on the board, and I'm always a sucker for that sort of visual representation.
What was I talking about?
Oh, right, board pieces. The board itself is kind of pretty too, honestly, which is surprisingly kind of a rarity. Often times, especially with games with big set pieces like this, the board itself takes a backseat when it comes to design, but obviously this was not the case this time, and I'm glad to see that.
The board is multicolored, the track has a very clean look that makes it easy to know where your token is and there are very discernible areas where it's obvious the hotel pieces go. This is, perhaps not a super visually enthralling board, but it's at least one of the few that really makes sense when you look at it. You know exactly where everything goes, how it works and what to do with it, and that's somehow kind of an unusual thing in this industry. Often times, especially with these set piece boards, the board itself is cast to the side when it comes to the design, and seen instead as simply "that thing that's also there", so I'm more than happy to see that this one actually looks decent.Hotels is, as I said at the start, a fairly straightforward game, and honestly it'd probably be quite a bit of fun to play if you could get your hands on the original. I can't speak for the updated modernized version simply because not only did I not look into it because we're vintage as fuck around here but also because they usually uglify everything when they update it. You would think that, over time, as our technology becomes more advanced, we'd be more capable of crafting better looking stuff, but somehow the opposite is true. The further into the future we get, the more into the past everything looks, and suddenly everything from the past looks better than modern day stuff. Go figure.
The back of the box even comes with instructions printed on it about the various pieces you get and how to put them together, which is kind of neat. Overall, Hotels is actually a really solidly crafted board game, I'm not gonna lie. Everything from the aesthetic down to the actual layout is just really very well designed and organized and put together. Usually I'll have some snarky sort of quip or something about the board game I'm covering, but for once, I don't really have anything to say about this other than it's really well made and probably quite entertaining, which is nice. It's nice to enjoy things, for a change.
So yeah, that's Hotels. Milton Bradley really pumped out a lot of crap over the years, but I think this is the sort of thing where they really excelled. Okay sure, it's somewhat derivative of its predecessor, but it's still original enough to stand on its own. It simply took inspiration from the hotel aspect of Monopoly and turned it up to 11. Along with beautiful little set pieces, a clean minimalist board design and a game length that actually can be defined as "lengthy", Hotels might be one the more solid board games I've covered thusfar.
That being said, there's also something boring about covering a game that has nothing stupid to joke about, so don't worry, rest assured that next week I'll try to cover something absolutely ridiculous again so we can have a good laugh amongst ourselves. I'm a little curious, I must admit, as to where Milton Bradley could've taken this sort of concept next. Like, why didn't they make a reality board game? Maybe be the one to sell the most houses or something. Some sort of game set in suburbia or something. Just a thought. Then again, with how nobody can afford a house these days, maybe it'd be seen as an insult.
After all, Millennial Monopoly didn't really go over too well now, did it?
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