Tower Dream is a “table game” released by ASCII Corporation in autumn 96. The game has been released for the Japanese SuperFamicom (Super Nintendo); all the game messages are in Japanese. There is no English translation planned that I am aware of.
Instead of presenting a game review, here I present a version of the game rules. The original rules in the instruction booklet are in Japanese; these has been translated and re-organized by me to create this article. The purpose is to allow the reader to form (to a certain extent) his own opinions on the game, without resorting to subjective opinions of the reviewer.
(In short, Tower Dream is a blend between the famous board games Acquire and Monopoly.)
Tower Dream is played by four players. Computer players are chosen from an array of nine to fill in vacancies. (The remaining computer players watch the game and 'comment' on it from time to time.) The game is played on one of eight boards. Different boards involve different levels of luck; look for segregated boards if you want luck to play a heavy part.
A game board consists of a grid of squares, called Lands, surrounded by a track, called Roads. The players place properties on the Lands, and move on the Roads. (This is a rather distinct layout than all the other Monopoly clones, where the players move and build in the same spaces.) For example, the first two boards are 7x7 and 10x10 grids respectively, with a 32 and 44 space Road respectively surrounding the Lands, with some Event spaces at the corners. On each Land space, potentially, a Landmark, up to twenty Building Floors (normally), plus a Building Mark may be built.
Each (non-Event) Road space corresponds to a Line of Lands, which is, well, the horizontal and/or vertical line(s) of Lands that ends at the Road space.
Each player starts with 1500G at the Start space. The player order is determined randomly. Game play continues until either 75% of the Lands are covered with Landmarks, or somebody goes broke. After the Owner Bonuses for the yet existing Companies are added, all the players are ranked according to Wealth. The player with the most Wealth (cash plus properties) is the winner.
The game play consists of taking turns rolling the dice and moving. A player places a Landmark anywhere on the Line he landed in. Two or more adjacent Landmarks form a Company, on which Buildings can be built. When a Landmark is placed such that two Companies become connected, the smaller Company is absorbed into the larger one. A player with the most properties on a Line collects Line Fee from players who land there. The two players with the most properties in a Company are the Owners of the Company; they collect a large Owner Bonus when the Company is absorbed, or at game end. When a Company grows larger, the Floor price and the Owner Bonus increase. What follows is a detailed description of the play procedure.
Players take turns. Each turn, the player conducts the following phases in the specified order.
If the player wishes, he may sell his Floors on one or more lands to the Bank. Only a total of up to 3 floors can be sold each turn in this phase. The player gets only 75% of the Floor price when selling in this phase.
The player rolls a 10-sided dice, and moves clockwise along the Road the rolled number of spaces. If he passes or lands in the Start space, he collects a salary of 1500G.
If he lands in an Event space, the Event is resolved and his turn is over. He does not get to place a Landmark or build Floors unless specified by the Event. (For this reason, players often feel that any Event that is not noticeably good is bad. This game is unlike Monopoly: you want to take your turns and build stuff.)
The player must pay Line Fee to the Line Owner of the space he landed in.
The Line Owner is the player with the most properties on the Line. Landmarks, Building Floors, and Building Marks each counts as one. If there is a tie, all such players are Line Owners, and the full Line Fee must be paid to each of them. A player does not pay Line Fee to himself. If he is the sole Line Owner, he pays nothing. Notice that only the Line Owner(s) gets the Line Fee; the other players get nothing regardless of what they own on the Line.
The Line Fee is 50G times the number of properties owned by the Line Owner on the Line. However, everything on a Land with a Tower (13 to 19 Building Floors) counts for 65G each, and everything on a Land with a Grand Tower (20+ Building Floors) counts for 100G each. Notice that the amount of the Line Fee is independent of the price of the Floors.
If the player does not have enough cash to pay the Line Fee, he must immediately sell properties to the Bank to cover the deficit. All properties sold this phase are sold at only 25% Floor price. He must first sell Floors, and if that does not bring him enough money, he must then sell Landmarks. Landmarks sold to the Bank remain there, but become owned by the Bank. They can be claimed by a player in lieu of placing a new Landmark who lands in a Line containing the Landmark. (This is the only way a Landmark ever change hands, to my knowledge.) If selling all Landmarks still leaves the player in the red, he goes broke and the game is immediately over. In Tower Dream, this occasionally happens, but most often it does not. There are simply more ways to gain Wealth than to lose it.
The player places a Landmark of his color on a vacant Land on the Line. This is mandatory, if possible. He gets to choose the Land on the Line on which to place the Landmark. Placement of a Landmark is always free of charge. The Landmark indicates ownership of the Land space.
A Company is a set of (more than one) orthogonally adjacent (connected) Landmarks. When a player places a Landmark adjacent to one or more “loose” Landmarks (and not also adjacent to an existing Company), he must start a new Company. There are nine different Companies in the game, with different Floor prices and growth rates. The player chooses a Building Mark (a large Company logo sign) and places it on the Landmark he just placed. (The Building Mark is one incentive to start a new Company, since it counts as a Floor for most game purposes, and it comes free!) If all nine Building Marks are currently in use, he cannot start a new Company and the group of Landmarks remain “loose”. Also, no one can start a Company until everybody has taken their first turn.
A Landmark that is placed adjacent to an existing Company is added to the Company. The number of Landmarks in a Company is called the Level of the Company. When a Landmark is placed adjacent to two or more existing Companies, a Merge takes place. The largest Company absorbs all the other Companies. The largest Company is the one with the highest Level; number of Floors are counted in case of a tie. If that is also tied, the player who is placing the Landmark chooses which Company remains.
All Landmarks of the absorbed Companies remain there and become Landmarks of the absorbing Company, but all Floors and Building Marks are immediately sold to the Bank at 100% Floor price. In addition, the Owners of the absorbed Companies immediately collect a large cash bonus called the Owner Bonus.
The player who has the most properties in a Company is called the Top Owner; the player who is second is called the Sub-Owner. The Owners collect a bonus when the Company is absorbed, or at the end of the game. The Top Owner Bonus is
2000G + (the current Floor price * 13)
The Sub-Owner Bonus is half that amount. The Floor price differ between Companies, and it generally increases as the Company gains Levels.
Once a Company attains Level 13, it can no longer be absorbed. No Landmarks may be placed in a Land which is adjacent to more than one Level 13 (or higher) Companies.
The player may, if he wishes, build up to 3 Floors on any single Land space of his color that belongs to a Company. He may not build on loose Land, and he may not build beyond 20 Floors in a Land (a Grand Tower). He can only build with the cash he currently has.
Building Floors sway Company Ownership and Line Ownership, yield Line Fee income, and go up in value when the Company expands. They also serve as tie breaker during a Merge between Companies of the same Level.
The price of a Building Floor depends on the Company, and also the current Level. To give the reader some idea, I am including the floor price table for six of the nine Companies in the game.
Property value is always calculated based on the current Floor price. Anything on a loose Land is worth 0G when selling or determining victory.
Once a player has built his Floors or has declined to do so, play then passes to the next player.
The game ends after the player who builds the 75th percentile Landmark has completed his last turn. The game also ends immediately when any player goes broke. (It is possible that a board position arises so that it is impossible to legally place any Landmarks anywhere, but there are less than 75% Landmarks. The game program fails to consider this, and the game would not end. This is a bug. However, such situation should not arise out of normal play; it is quite hard to achieve even with the collaboration of all four players.)
Each player adds together his cash and his property values (all properties are evaluated at 100% Floor price). He then adds any Owner Bonus for Companies that are still existing. The players are ranked according to their total Wealth.
There are a number of Events on the boards; some are weird. I will not get too much into these and leave it to the lucky players who get a chance to actually play the game. I will describe three of the Events here.
As previously mentioned, players generally consider Events a bad thing unless they are noticeably good. Most Events other than the Jackpot are not noticeably good; the computer players usually comment appropriately when they run into an Event.
The player must draw a Event card from a pile of his choice. The four piles are: Squid (high risk, high gain), Octopus (mostly cash-related Events), Crab (low risk), and Crocodile (mostly movement-related). The naming of the piles correspond to Japanese puns.
The Jackpot starts with one Floor, and one Floor is added whenever a player passes the Jackpot space. The player who lands at the Jackpot space gets all the Jackpot Floors for free, to be placed immediately in one of his Lands (of his choice). The Jackpot is then reset to one Floor.
The Jackpot is a major chance element in the game. It even borders on spoiling the game as an overwhelming blind luck element.
The player gets a free play at the 4-wheel slot machine. The number of wheels matched (starting from the left) determines the magnitude of the price.
Thanks for reading.
There is a deliberate major logical omission (hole) in the above rules (in sections 1. to 3.). Try to find it!