Capitalize
- Board's Eye View
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
Due to launch on Kickstarter later this month, Capitalize is an economic game where the 2–4 players are property developers building on land and developing their buildings. You can buy and sell land on your turn but land doesn't earn you any income until its developed...
First you need to build suburbs, and when you've a suburb tile in place you can build on it with urban tiles and eventually create a city. You always have to pay the building costs but suburban, urban and city tiles earn you income every turn and they all contribute to your net worth (a city, for example, adds $425,000 to your net worth). A player wins the game if they start their turn with a net worth of at least $1 million. One gripe from our plays is that it can be fiddly totting up and keeping track of net worth, so we would like to see a tracker that showed each player's property values at a glance.
In addition to developing land you can buy stocks in allied industries (construction, banking and estate agency). Stock is pricey but it gives you a payout whenever any player takes a specified action; so, for example, Construction Stock pays out when any player builds a suburb or urban tile.
You get the income generated by your developed land at the start of your turn. You also earn a base salary of $15,000 but that isn't paid automatically on your turn. Instead, every player's turn ends with them rolling two custom six-sided dice. Salary is paid to whichever players' icons come up. That introduces a high luck factor in the game. We guess it should even out over the course of a game but a player who benefits from a succession of lucky rolls early on in the game will certainly be at a significant advantage. That said, there's scope in Capitalize for a tactical approach. In one of our plays at Board's Eye View, a player spent their initial capital buying up plots of land adjacent to other players' holdings. This didn't generate them any income so it put them at an early disadvantage but it favoured them in the long term because it limited the other players' growth opportunities in the mid to late game...
Players are strongly incentivised to invest their cash but going all in does involve taking a serious push-your-luck gamble. One face of just one of the dice shows a tax demand: when that comes up every player is required to pay the bank an amount equal to 100% of the combined total of their salary and investment income. If you don't have the cash in hand because it's been tied up in investments you're forced to liquidate assets at firesale prices; very much akin to mortgaging property in Monopoly. There's no player elimination, so if even after a sell-off you still can't pay your tax bill you can stay in the game and continue to earn salary whenever your icon comes up in players' dice rolls and you can re-start your property development once you've fully paid your taxes. The bankruptcy set back from being unable to pay your taxes tho' is pretty much impossible to recover from.
Other than in a sale forced by the taxman, however, there's not usually any disadvantage in selling an asset you've just bought. Indeed there's often an arbitrage margin in your favour - especially if you hold Stock that pays out for transactions - so there's more to the game than just racing to build. You may well benefit from a salary payment roll on another player's turn, and if you buy Stock you'll benefit when another player triggers a payout, but there's not much active interaction with other players. It's only a Court of Justice roll (again, a single die face) that generates direct 'take that' player interaction because that lets you choose another player to 'sue' for $20,000. That means there's not much opportunity for other players to prevent an opponent from claiming victory at the start of their next turn once they've managed to hit $1 million during their turn.
Unlike Monopoly, Capitalize is never going to overstay its welcome. It's a game where you're likely to have a millionaire emerge in around 40 minutes.
We'll endeavour to add a link to the Capitalize Kickstarter when it goes live.
