Even at 100 yen (excluding tax), it's surprisingly not to be underestimated!? I played the Daiso board game 'Financial Strategy Game'

Did you know that Daiso (Daiso Industries Co., Ltd.), the giant of 100-yen shops, sells board games?

Various titles are all sold for 100 yen (excluding tax). While you might think the content is only worth 100 yen, there are some titles that are actually quite playable and shouldn't be underestimated.

However, I never expected a game of this scale to be sold...

'Financial Strategy Game'. You can tell from the packaging that it has many tokens and an elaborate game board.

This for 100 yen (excluding tax)?

I bought it the moment I saw it.

Anyway, I decided to play it with my family.
I opened the package and laid out all the contents.

The contents are: 1) 1 game board, 2) 4 player pieces, 3) 2 dice, 4) instruction manual (Japanese, English), 5) 27 financial strategy cards, 6) 36 postcard cards, 7) 36 news cards, 8) insurance certificates... 6 each of life insurance and car insurance, 9) promissory notes... 7 each of 100 million yen and 200 million yen, 10) banknotes... 22 of 100,000 yen, 18 of 500,000 yen, 23 of 1 million yen, 24 of 5 million yen, 27 of 10 million yen, 12 of 50 million yen, 9 of 100 million yen.

I'll say it again, this is a 100-yen (excluding tax) game.

This is the game board.

Players start the game with 70 million yen in cash as shown above.
(You have that much money and you still want more!!)

The game starts from this 'Settlement Square'. This is a place you always return to after one lap, where you receive your salary (a whopping 2 million yen per month!) and settle your balance for businesses, loan interest, insurance certificates, etc.

The goal of the game is to save 1 billion yen in cash.
The player who reaches 1 billion yen first after settling here wins.

The basics of the game are the same as a board game. You roll two dice and follow the instructions on the square you land on, such as paying or receiving money, or drawing a card.

When you land on this square, you draw one "Financial Strategy Card".

There are cards like this for financial strategy. There are three types: "Real Estate," "Investment," and "Entrepreneurship," and you decide whether to pay the initial capital to purchase them. Once purchased, the amount written at the bottom becomes your income on settlement day.

But you can't just buy them when they suddenly talk about "hundreds of millions." So...

Ta-da!! The bank will provide loans to those who pave their own way. Look, this is a promissory note! They will lend you up to 300 million yen. You have to pay interest on settlement day, but if you're making that much profit, paying in the millions is a piece of cake, right!?

Oh man, I ended up with 200 million yen in debt... But this player's income on settlement day is 33 million yen. The basic goal of this game is to repeat this to increase your own financial resources and aim for 1 billion yen (note that loans can be repaid on settlement day).

However, as long as you are using financial strategies, there is no such thing as zero risk. If you draw this
"News Card"...

It often turns out like this, with nothing good happening (though there is good news occasionally...). You might end up in a serious situation where you are forced to sell off your assets due to an accident or something similar.

"Post Card"? What on earth is that? A post office?

It seems these are like the "Chance" and "Community Chest" cards in "Monopoly." Some have good effects, while others bring disaster.

In case of any unforeseen circumstances, you can also take out 'life insurance' or 'car insurance'. This part is like 'The Game of Life'.

This is the insurance policy.

However... in this game, insurance might be meaningless in terms of the amount. In a game where tens of millions are flying around, it feels like a waste of time to deal with hundreds of thousands. Oh, yikes, my sense of money has gone somewhere...

There are days when stock prices skyrocket...

And days when stock prices crash...

Sometimes you throw yourself into gambling...
('Lucky Dice'. Decide on a bet between 1 and 5 million yen, roll two dice, and if you get doubles, you win 10 times the amount. You can try up to 3 times.)

And sometimes you throw yourself into adventure...
(A space where you can choose a high-risk, high-return adventure course)

The donations keep piling up. Who will get them...?
(The person who lands on the space gets them)

And so, who was the one to get 1 billion yen...!?

Surprisingly, no one!!

<Results>

This game is so long!! The three of us in my family were playing, and even though we were all playing quite speedily, after about 4 hours of play, no one was even close to reaching 1 billion. The gap in money between players had grown, and it was getting close to dinner preparation time, so after a family discussion, we decided to settle everything at a specific time! At that stage, we sold off our assets, paid off our debts, and decided that the player with the most money would be the winner for now.... And so, the results were,

1st place player: 636.2 million yen
2nd place player: 530.7 million yen
3rd place player: 366.5 million yen

That's how it turned out. If we had played for another 2 or 3 hours, maybe someone would have reached 1 billion yen, but there was no way we could maintain the motivation for that long. Anyway, having this much money is enough to live on!!

<General Review>

I certainly think it was worth more than 100 yen (plus tax). It is no exaggeration to call it a feat to have packed a game board and tokens of this quality into a package at this price.

However, frankly speaking,this is not a game you play until you save 1 billion yen.

I mean, this was the result after playing for 4 hours, right? How heavy of a game is this? What you do during the game is repeat the cycle of 'borrow money to buy assets' -> 'make a profit and pay off debt' -> 'borrow more money to buy bigger assets,' and to buy those assets, you just have to wait endlessly for the 'Financial Strategy Card' spaces, which you never know when you'll land on. Moreover, whether you get the assets you want depends on luck, so the playtime just keeps stretching on like ramen noodles.

Well, it is only 100 yen (plus tax). You shouldn't expect too much.

However, as we did this time,'deciding on a time limit and forcing a settlement to end it'or perhaps'setting the victory condition to 300 million yen'might make it a reasonably playable game.

(Postscript: It's an idea I had later, but I think just changing the rules to'you can choose to flip a Financial Strategy card or not'or'you can buy financial assets whenever and whatever you want'would make the game progress more smoothly. After all, the reason this game takes so long is that you can't buy financial assets freely.)

…That said, I might not play this at home anymore. I still have a pile of other board games to play.

Oh, that's right, if anyone is interested, I'll sell this to a reader for1000 yen (plus tax)!That's a good idea, that's a good idea!! What do you all think? (Financial strategy lol)

<Reference>

Articles I wrote in the past about Daiso 100-yen board games.