Giveaway of the Day - Richman Games: Monopoly of New York

PLEASE NOTE:

The process EDSKSOFTUPDATE.exe that is included with this game is a utility for updating the game; there are plans for the game to have more than one city included in the game, which you can see via the options menu. The updater file can easily be blocked if you have a problem with it attaching to your startup like I did.

(Updater files can be mistaken for Trojan Droppers. If you want to see what a Trojan Dropper is capable of doing check the PrevX site HERE

The company who sell the game are called EDesksoftware which is very close to the name of the trojan Dropper that has been around since 2007. I’d have to spend more time looking into this, which I don’t have today as it’s the only day we get to spend as a family. If you aren’t sure about the game and don’t want to install it, you could either use a sandbox program so that the game cannot do anything to your computer or check my additional information below dfor alternatives. There are several monopoly games available from Caimans Games that I’ve linked to below.

The game giveaway team test all games given away here with several programs and do not include games that have malware of any type. It’s up to you the community member to decide whether you want to trust the giveaway team and install this game. I’ve installed it but blocked the EDSKSOFTUPDATE.exe from attaching itself to my startup, but only because I don’t like auto updaters.

I’ve had the demo installed for a week now and there has been nothing to indicate any problems. I suspect that there has been a confusion between the actual malware EDS and the name of the software updater (called EDesksoftware), plus the fact that autoupdaters such as EDSKSOFTUPDATE.exe can be mislabelled as a Trojan Dropper, that said it will be up to the individual to decide what they should do. If you are in any doubt it’s obvious what your choice should be. Personally I trust the giveaway team to have delivered a safe program and have installed the game onto two of my computers so that I could confirm that they work on three platforms (Win XP, Vista and Win 7), which they do.

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Monopoly of New York:

Installation:

The game downloads to a 6.3Mb zip file that unpacks to a read me and dual activation and setup file. The game installs to the following path by default, but you can change the path during the installation wizard:

C:\Program Files(x86)\Rickman\ (64 bit systems)

C:\Program Files\Rickman\ (32 bit systems)

During the installation wizard you can choose to have an icon installed to the desktop and additionally to the quick launch bar if you wish. The quick launch check box is empty by default, the desktop icon is checked by default. At the end of the installation depending upon whether you have any start up protection you may get a message asking for permission to allow an auto updater to attach itself to the start up boot sequence. Blocking this does not affect game play elements of the game, only the auto updater. Shortcuts are installed to both the desktop (called RichMan Games and the Start/Programs list. You’ll find an uninstaller withing the Start/Programs folder as well as . The first time you click on the RichMan Games Icon you will automatically activate the game; that said the game is set to start automatically at the end of the installation wizard, so if you are like me and uncheck the box that says start the game, make sure you click on the games icon before the end of the game giveaway period otherwise you may find the game hasn’t been registered.

The game has been tested on Win XP Pro 32 bit with SP3, Vista home Premium 64 bit with SP1 and win 7 Ultimate and Win 7 Pro both 64 bit and it’s worked on all platforms.

Introduction:

Monopoly of New York is one of the most popular board games available today. It will take you to New York City on a with a business trip. Your goal is to maximize your net worth through various corporate actions and make yourself the richest person in New york City. Richman is a local multiplayer (4 players) game of business strategy with very simple rules. You can host a game night with family and friends. Now, Let us join in on the “rags to riches” fun! Do you want to be the owner of the Empire State Building; do you want to be the Oil Magnate or just Play the game to win? Monopoly of New York is a lot of fun for the entire family!

Reference accessed HERE Dec 25th 2010. I’ve edited the introduction due to some very poor grammar and sentence structure. It’s not perfect, but reads much better than the original which you can see via the reference link above,

The Game:
You can play Monopoly of New York either as a single player game against the computer AI, with up to thee AI slots, or you can toggle any of the AI slots to human players. The AI slots can all but one be turned off so effectively you have a two player, three player or four player game. At the start of a game you can name each player whether it be human or AI or just leave the default setting which names the players; Player 1 – 4. Each player is represented with a player Icon/avatar in game. There are twelve different ones to choose from. You have to select your avatar at the beginning of the game. Once you start the actual game play you can no longer change your avatar. Each player slot is also colour coded, Player 1 = Red, Player 2 = Green, Player 3 = Blue and Player 4 = Yellow. Each player slot has a toggle for Human or AI player and you can set the difficulty for each of the slots that is set to Computer AI; there is no difficulty settings for human players. There are three difficulty settings for the computer based players, easy, normal and hard. The higher you set the difficulty for the AI, the harder it is to beat them (unless you’re an expert like me NOT, lol). You can also set the amount of starting cash between 1200 to 2400 cash and there is a select map facility which at this time only has one map i.e. Monopoly of New York. This would indicate than more cities may be added in the future.

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The game is simple to play with much the same rules as the traditional game. Each AI controlled character will take its turn automatically. When it’s a human player’s turn a small window appears in the centre of the playing board with your icon on it, also your name and a large button that says ROLL DICE. The number you roll automatically appears just above the centre of the board. Depending upon where you land, title deeds, Luck messages, utility cards etc. will appear in the centre of the board with all the usual information that you get on the traditional cards such as the cost of the property, the rent other players have to pay if they land on that property, and the rent paid if you own the whole set or own other houses or hotels on the property.

Landing on a Casino gives you the opportunity to bet some of your money on a simple game. You input the amount you want to bet then choose one of several bets that may double or triple your money. These bets are dependent upon the roll of the dice. Double bets have more chances to win than those that choose a triple multiplier. If you lose, the amount you bet is removed from the money you hold in your hand. You cannot bet money that is placed in the bank until you’ve withdrawn it. There is no cost to withdrawal.

When you go to jail you can post bail on your next turn and move immediately.

The main difference between todays ‘RickMan’ game and the one most people on this planet are probably familiar with is the colours and positions of properties, and for me at least the biggest difference is the ability to make hostile take overs of properties that you may land on that belong to other people. The cost of a hostile take-over is significantly more than the basic cost of the original card. The price of a take-over increases with the number of cards you hold of that colour and also for every star grading you have. Another difference to the usual game is the bank. You are able to make deposits of the money that you hold into the bank when you either land on it or pass it during game play. When you make a throw of the dice you must immediately click on the bank slot if you want to make a deposit or withdrawal, or even a loan, otherwise your icon will move across the bank without stopping. Depositing money will give you a 10% bonus for every round that you keep it in the bank. If you want to make a loan it will cost you 15% of the total loan you make. If you haven’t paid back the loan after seven moves the amount you owe will have more than doubled. Money that has been deposited into the bank cannot be used to purchase properties or utilities until it has been withdrawn from the bank, so be sure to have enough money for a complete circuit of the game board, otherwise you may regret it when you land on a property that you either wanted to purchase or submit a hostile take over.

To the right of the playing board you can see details of what each player owns, the amount of money they have, their assets and the amount of money invested in their assets, and the amount of money they may have loaned or placed in the bank . Clicking on the check boxes that denote the various properties and utilities will bring up that particular card in the middle of the board and will show all the details that you can normally see on a card. This facility is useful with respect to finding out how much it will cost to make a hostile take-over of the property when you land on it, or the cumulative rent that is due if you land on the property . The more a player owns of a particular colour the more the rent will be. To see another players details you have to click on their avatar in the right hand information column. You can also see a history of all moves made in game below the player information. The most recent being at the top of the list.
The options menu is accessible at any time during game play via the Main Menu and game play is carried out using the mouse. The only keyboard button that you can use is the Esc button, which minimises the board and is your boss key. You cannot even see the game in the task bar when you click on the boss key.

Features:

• Boss Key(Escape) – Hide/Show the game quickly

• Single-player Games Mode – You can play with the smart computer player

• Multiplayer Games Mode – Play with family and friends. Host your game night.

• New Map & Features – Placed in New York City & Added Hostile Takeover Feature

• Simple Rules – If you have played Monopoly board games then you can play Richman. Very easy to play.

Requirements:

•OS: Window s2000, XP, 2003, Vista or Windows 7

Editing the Game:

I though the music was very annoying, thankfully you can turn the music down or toggle it off as you can with the sound effects, however I found the sound effects added to the game play experience. You can replace the music files that you can find in the C:\Program files(x86)\RichMan\appdata folder for 64 bit computers or C:\Program files\RichMan\appdata folder for 32 bit computers with your own FAVORITE MUSIC IF YOU WISH. The music files are MP3’s so it shuldn’t be to difficult. All you’ll need to do is change the names of the music files you are changing to the default names. That is backmusic.mp3 and beginmusic.mp3. All the sound effects are Wav files. You could even swap these for other wav files if you wish, but you’d have to make sure you remamed the files to the correct sound that you wanted to replace, for example you may want to change the sound of the game pieces as they move which is the move.wav file. There are many sound effects available freely on the net. If they aren’t Wav files you can easily convert them using a free audio converter. You’ll find some audio converters in the giveaway freeware library HERE.

You can also replace the in game icon/avatars with your own images, so you could place images of your family in the appdata folder. You will have to adjust the size of the images to the same or similar size that the default avatars are set to and you will also need to rename the avatars to the ones you are replacing.HERE. They are numbered 1 to 12 (seeing as there are twelve avatars) and they are jpg files. Simplz.

Conclusion:
Overall a pleasant game with stress free game play (unless you hate losing to an AI). The rules are straightforward. Though you won’t find any instructions either on the game board or in the installed games folder. If you are unsure how to play there are many tutorials online, both written and video tutorials. Do keep in mind though that this game does not follow the original games rules to the letter.

The game is ideal for those rainy weekends when you are stuck for something to do with the family. It’s an ideal family game and I would score this game highly because of it’s long tradition. The game is well constructed with simple graphics; nothing fancy, but enough to feel you are almost playing the original. I like itand will be keeping a copy on at least one of my computers. If RickMan decide to expand the game by adding more cities I think I would definitely purchase this game. They do need to add instructions as I’m sure there are those who have never played the game. (This was one of the first board games I ever played together with Snakes and Ladders, Backgammon, Chess, Draughts (Checkers), Ludo, Cluedo and the Game of Life, oh yeah and not forgetting Risk and Chinese Solitaire).

Score out of 100 (each category max of 20)

Game Play – 20
Graphics – 12
Audio – 4
Re-playability – 20
Target Groups – 16

Total = 72

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Alternatives:

There’s 30 board games available HERE from MyPlayCity that include
Amusive Checkers, Amusive Chess, Astral Masters, Bato, Billiard Art, Billiards Club, Elementals: The Magic Key (previous giveaway), Empire Of The Gods, Grand Master Chess 3, Infant Puzzles, Knight’s Gambit , Moscow Billiards, Play Mahjong Forever, Rune Of Fate, Simajo: The Travel …

You’ll find nearly 80 board games over at Caiman games HERE that include some iterations of monopoly, Scrabble, Stratego, Chess, Ludo, Checkers, Chinese Solitaire, Risk, Dominoes, Yatzee, Backgammon, Othello, Reversi, Battleships, Mastermind, Dara (African board game, Pente, Tic Tack Toe, Abalone plus variations of these game plus more.

You’ll also find some board games posted in the free games project via the games synopsis HERE , bearing in mind I’ve not updated the synopsis since around week 100 (it’s now week 145) so you may also find some in the game discussion forums HERE (I’m actually in the process of adding all the games posted between weeks 100 to 145 to the free games synopsis, but it’s a tedious job and will take several weeks to complete.

For those not interested in today’s giveaway, or in board games in general the free games team have posted loads of excellent games in the game discussion forums over the past few weeks that include Holdover an excellent puzzle platformer with Anime elements , Isocraft a Minecraft like game though in its early stages of development and isometric as opposed to 3D, there’s a Lego designer modelling tool that all those budding builders will love (the kids and dads in particular will love this one) called Lego Digital Designer. You’ll also find an arkanoid based on the children’s cartoon series Ben 10 called Blockade Blitz and 1916: The War you Never Knew, a really cool First Person horror survival game (it made me jump). Then there’s a retro R.P.G from the Ultima series called Ultima IV :Quest of the Avatar, a pet simulation game called Amju Pet Zoo that the younger kids will love. There’s also a platform action shmup called Action Cyborg (strictly for the adults) and one of those games you can dip into for a few minutes of stress management called Jaywalker: Take Back the Streets, an action game where you have to make cars swerve and crash without being hit yourself. There’s a really good tycoon game called Ski Resort Tycoon, a gorgeously illustrated adventure game called Les Misérables, A professionally made top down shooter called Steel Storm: Episode 1. (The developer has released three in the series and decided to give the first one away), an updated RPG called Battle for Wesnoth, a futuristic and superfast racing game with missiles and guns called Rollcage, a series of Jill of the Jungle platform games (these are DOS based games that may require the use of DOSBox), a couple more shooters called A Stitch in Time and Light the Way plus a puzzle action shmup called Protractor (these are all on the same page and can be found by clicking on the Light the Way link, you’ll also find a long list of games in the same post we are planning to post over the coming weeks). There’s a really good platformer with great graphics called Privates, a set of Rubik Cube puzzles called The Ultimate Magic Cube and a DOS based puzzle game called Clone. On the next page you’ll find even more quality freebies such as Aces High over Verlor Island and Blue Max 3D two excellent aircraft shooters, an evolution game called Evolites, plus several more games which I’ll just list: Dirchie Kart, Armoured Brigade, Jigsaw (Puzzle Platformer), Flight Gear an excellent flight simulator with loads of aircraft to fly, (Updated recently), a series of Sci Fi adventure games called 1213 episodes 1,2 & 3, Greymatter, Iffermoon, Hitchhikers Guide, 3D Star Strike and finally another freebie from Good Old Games (GOG) called Dragonsphere which is a point and click fantasy adventure game. Some of these games were originally commercial titles that have either become abandonware or were made freeware by their developers. .

A bit of a concern – AVG detected a “known piece of Malaware – EDSKSOFTUPDATE.exe” whent the program was installing.