Blue Marble Game

Blue Marble Game (부루마불게임) is a Korean board game similar to Monopoly manufactured by Si-Yat-Sa. While Monopoly is traditionally played across locations in a single city, the Blue Marble Game features cities from across the world; its title is a reference to the "blue marble" description of the Earth as seen from space.

The game was first published in 1982.[1] It can be played by 2 to 4 players.[2]

Game Mechanics

Players move around the board in order to buy property, build buildings on the properties, pay rent to other players, and earn a salary. There are also random events cards called Golden Key cards. The game ends when all but one player has gone bankrupt. This is similar to Monopoly.

More similarities to Monopoly include:

Differences from Monopoly

Money

The game currency is in Korean Won, rather than dollars. The denominations are a thousand times greater than those in Monopoly. The lowest denomination is ₩1000, which corresponds to $1. This is similar to the value of the actual Korean won and US dollar today, although the value of the currencies fluctuate. When the game was made in 1982, the dollar was worth between ₩700 and ₩750.[3]

Board Layout

Blue Marble
Welfare
Buenos AiresGolden KeySao PauloSydneyBusanHawaiiLisbonQueen ElizabethMadridSpace Travel
Montriol
부루마불
Tokyo
BerlinSpace Shuttle Columbia
Golden KeyParis
ZurichRome
ConcordGolden Key
StockholmLondon
CopenhagenNew York
Golden KeyPay Welfare
AteneSEOUL OLYMPIC
Deserted IslandIstanbulCairoGolden KeySinga-poreCheju IslandManilaHong KongGolden KeyTaipeiStart

Most of the color spaces on the board represent cities in the world, with the exception of Hawaii. The railroad spaces are replaced by Jeju Island, The Concord, Busan, the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner, and the Columbia Space Shuttle. Having combinations of these does not raise the price of rent.

The board includes several spaces with special rules:-

Building

Players can build houses, office buildings and hotels. Players do not have to collect color combinations in order to build on their properties, but may build only when landing on a property they already own. There is an increase in rent on properties with buildings. Increases occur in the following increments:

The rulebook does not specifically state that there are building pre-requisites.

Bankruptcy

If a player does not have enough cash to pay off a debt, that player is bankrupt. The player can raise money by selling buildings at half price to the bank, or by selling owned properties back to the bank at full price, or to other players at any price. There is no mortgage system in the Blue Marble Game.

Statistics

In Blue Marble Game, there is no space that sends the player to the deserted island other than the deserted island space itself. Furthermore, rolling of doubles more than twice consecutively does not send the player to the deserted island. Therefore, the properties between the "Deserted Island" and "Space Travel" are not as likely to be landed on as the corresponding properties in Monopoly (between "Jail" and "Go to Jail").

Space Travel allows the player to choose to go to any space on the board. Thus, likelihood of landing on a particular space in Blue Marble Game can't be exactly calculated like in Monopoly, as players can choose to go to different spaces on the board based on current game conditions. Because of Space Travel, it is probably less likely that players would land on Blue Marble's "Seoul Olympic" space than on Monopoly's "Boardwalk" space, as space traveling players could opt to minimize their likelihood of landing on "Seoul Olympic" by choosing to travel to "Start". However, this too depends on current game conditions.

Loopholes

This only works if the rules for space travel are followed exactly as in the rulebook. Most players use the variation that allows them to instantly move to another space, collect salary, buy it, buy buildings, or pay rent on it, and end the turn (or roll again if doubles were rolled to get to space travel.) Therefore, moving to space travel after landing on space travel would result in a never ending loop, until the player chooses to land somewhere else.

References

  1. "Blue Marble | Board Game". BoardGameGeek. Retrieved 2009-07-06.
  2. Blue Marble Game instruction booklet
  3. "South Korea / U.S. Foreign Exchange Rate: South Korean Won To One U.S. Dollar". Fxstreet.com. Retrieved 2009-07-06.
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