Magnate: The First City is live (Land plotting)
Update: Magnate: The First City has launched on Kickstarter, and the campaign will run for 20 days. Besides the basic pledge, there is also the Tycoon pledge that includes three mini expansions, and two expensive pledges that offer you the chance to see your name on a neighborhood tile or your face printed on money. The solo AI has its own board and deck of 24 cards.
Our preview post below was published on November 18.
Magnate: The First City is a 1-4 player economic game in which you buy land property, construct buildings, and try to sell at the most opportune moment before the market crashes.
On your turn, you get to perform three actions such as: acquire land, place buildings, get tenants. The placement of buildings defines how lucrative they are going to be. Malls, for example, should be placed near houses to maximize profit from customers. Parking lots are great for malls too. Plazas are good matches for offices. And solar farms are good for..? Well, you'll figure it out. The acquisition of tenants, who also have a preference as to where they want to stay, is regulated via dice rolls, with ways to mitigate the result.
After you finish your actions, the market adjusts accordingly. The same plot of land that cost 300,000$ will eventually cost one million. And at some point, as you and the AI opponent (for solo)* keep building, the bubble will burst, and you don't want it to burst on your face. Prices suddenly plummet, so if you haven't sold the property while it was still worth something, you will end up a wreck.
The game will launch on Kickstarter on November 21, and has lots of plastic buildings to use in your empire.
*Details regarding the solo mode are yet to be revealed. It is only described as 'robust'.
