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 photograph taken by the crew of Apollo 17, and its 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]
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.
Similarities to Monopoly include:
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.
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 Space Shuttle Columbia. Having combinations of these does not raise the price of rent.
The board includes several spaces with special rules:-
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.
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.
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 not 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 Marbles "Seoul Olympic" space than on Monopolys "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.