Monopoly, one of the most played board game in the world, has been made available for iPhone. It is a colorful game with an interface that is very simple to understand.

Monopoly Here & Now, as its called on the iPhone involves negotiations, resource management and some amount of luck with the dice.

Electronic Arts (EA) has managed to neatly squeeze the board game of yesteryear onto iPhone's 3.5-inch screen.

Objective of the game:

Each player starts with 15 million monopoly currency units and when it’s your turn, roll the dice and move those many numbers of spaces. When you land on a space, one of the several things can happen depending on the block you land upon.

The objective is to become the wealthiest player at the end of the game.

User Interface:

The user interface as been managed well and is very simple to understand.

However, the game play needs some getting used to which shouldn't be too difficult if you have already played the board game. 

The character token is well designed 3-D object and are quite animated. Such as the running sumo wrestler as seen in the screenshot below.

The animated instructions get annoying after the first game play, but it can be easily turned off using ‘Options’.

Features:

There are many cool features available in the app, the most notable one is the way you roll the dice.

Rolling of Dice:
A simple shaking of your iPhone just as you would roll the dice. However, this feature can be turned off via the Options menu.

Wi-Fi Multi-Player:
I found this one to be the most exciting feature. Nothing can match the
excitement of playing with friends on the same Wi-Fi network. The
interface is simple enough for one person to host and others to join
the game.

In the event of disconnection the game is not disrupted as the AI plays your game instead.

House Rules:
This option allows you to change some of the rules such as the amount of money each player starts with, limit on the number of houses, hotels etc.

Play your own music during game play:
It does not restrict the user with only the jazz and the lounge music options and allows you to play any personal music as the background.

Tips to play the game:

You will find these tips useful to play the iPhone game:

1. The initial strategy is to land on un-owned properties and to buy them. Some level of luck does determine which property the player lands on and could prove to be advantageous. But there are other factors involved, such as trading with other players, bidding the right amount, building hotels to increase rent etc.
2. Try collecting cards of the same color. This will give you ‘Monopoly’ i.e. the ability to enhance the property by building houses, hotels etc.
3. If you are short on monopoly currency, buy or trade the cheapest properties (dark brown and light blue), this will allow you to build more houses/hotels and yields you higher rent.
4. If you have sufficient funds then go for the costliest properties (green) as they will yield you higher rental returns and higher mortgage values.
5. Building hotels (more houses) will ensure that you drain your opponent faster.
6. Buy or trade Utilities – the more of these properties increases your rental income by many folds.



7. If you own a property that happens to be the last piece to another player’s set then try to get more out of those properties while trading.
8. During the bidding process, check out the price of the property and if required mortgage your existing property to get your hands on this new property. This works against an AI opponent. Remember: you will end up paying at least 10% extra while trying to un-mortgage the property but if well planned then the benefit far exceeds this 10% loss.

It would have been nice to have the following features:

• Ability to set time-limits, this could ensure that the winner is decided within predefined time limits.
• More movers (token characters) to the current set of characters.
• Ability to name each saved game.
• Ability to ‘hide your money’ – this can help during the auction or bidding process. Your opponents are aware of your bidding limits, since, your account balance is out in open.
• An option to bypass an auction.

I observed the following issues while playing the game:

1. Over Wi-Fi, the game seemed to be a little unstable, as my friend kept getting disconnected. I guess this
   feature would work a lot better when the game gets ported to iPhone
   firmware 3.0 which includes peer-to-peer connectivity. The saving grace is that in the event of
   disconnection (if you're hosting) the game is not disrupted as the AI plays your game
   instead.
2. Some movers (token characters) are always placed on top of the value of the property. I found it difficult to see the actual property price, especially if the token character belongs to my opponent.

Please let us know if there are any issues that you have faced so far.

Verdict:

Overall, I found the game to be very addictive and definitely worth its price of $4.99.

You can download Monopoly for the iPhone from the App Store using this direct iTunes link.

As always, don't forget to let us know your thoughts on the iPhone game.