Dogopoly (1977)

Overview

Monopoly with a couple of interesting twists. For kids, the most interesting twists are the canine theme. All the markers are dogs, the spaces around the board are different breeds, jail has become "the pound" and the houses are actually doghouses. Community Chest and Chance morph into Trees and Telephone poles (less sophomoric than it sounds) and instead of bank error in your favor you get rewarded for running off the dogcatcher or you have to go to the vet. The theme encourages a more light hearted approach than the serious real estate game.

For adults the best "twists" are those that speed up the action. The game does not require you to own all the territories of a given color before you can build a doghouse. You can only build as many doghouses as you have territories of that color, but you don't have to own them all. For instance, yellow in Dogopoly has three territories, if you own two of them you could have two doghouses on each, even if the third is unowned, or even owned by another player. Whenever you first buy a territory you are also given the option to immediately buy a doghouse at half-price. Taken together these little twists make the game go much faster.

There are few other twists, like the addition of shortcut paths across the board that can reroute players.