Hey everyone!
It's been three months since v0.49.0 dropped, and today I want to talk about v0.50.0, an update all about balance, deeper customization, and a handful of fresh content! Buckle up, there's a lot to cover.
First things first: balance
Picture this: you're ten rounds into a game and you're losing. You've only got two 5-star hotels to your name, everything else is just 3-star. Meanwhile, your opponents are all sitting on five-plus 5-star hotels... and it's time to vote. The choice feels impossible, either you lose all your 5-star hotels, or every monopoly gets thrown back into the pot. And one of your opponents? Nothing but monopolies. As luck would have it, 2 players vote to break the monopolies and 2 others vote to tear down all the 5-star hotels. For you, it's fine, it just keeps the game alive. But for the other 3 players, those rules are nothing but a source of pure frustration. They just spent 10 rounds building up their wealth, and it all vanishes with a single click.
So I went back to the drawing board on how voting works. From now on, whenever a vote leads to a hotel being released, the hotel's owner gets a portion of their investment back, not the full amount, but the land value. That way, players who had stacked up hotels get some compensation, but things don't just snap back to exactly the way they were.
Customization
A lot of you love a game that just keeps going. But with the helicopter in the mix, there's no such thing as a match that stretches past the hour mark. Sooner or later, the helicopter shows up and wrecks everyone's day, and it can sting. So for all you patient players out there, you can now disable the helicopter entirely by tweaking the rules when setting up your game.
Others prefer playing locally, and let's be honest, it can get confusing keeping track of who's who. So in local games, you can now rename the characters. Local only though, not online. Simple, effective, and it does the job.
New card and new rule
A new card is joining the deck: the Saboteur. It's a chaos card that, as the name suggests, lets you sabotage a rival's hotel. Don't worry, it doesn't wipe it out, it just strips away one star. The perfect way to settle personal scores in style.
A new chaos rule is also making its debut: the General Strike. In short, it puts all rent payments on hold for one full lap of the board. Every player gets one lap to work with before rent kicks back in on their properties. Yes, it slows the game down, I know, but I also know a lot of you are in no rush.
I had been toying with the idea of adding more tokens or board scenery, but I figured more cards and rules to vote on would be a lot more interesting.
And that's a wrap on v0.50.0! Thanks for reading all the way through. If you have ideas for new rules, cards, or anything else, drop them in the comments, I'd love to hear them.
See you in a few months for the next update.
Take care of yourselves in the meantime.
Xavier aka Binogure