1920 Wall Street Review

As stock market games go, 1920 Wall Street sits in an awkward middle ground. If the theme is unappealing to you, nothing in the game will make it more attractive. Although the game’s look and artwork are perfectly serviceable, it lacks the charm of Startups or the sly humour of Racoon Tycoon. 

Yet if you are an experienced investor, looking to test your savvy with a share manipulation game, you may find 1920 Wall Street’s gameplay on a lighter side. Moving around a rondel made from stock cards, players purchase shares of various goods or manipulate their worth on an adjacent market board. The stocks are only worth points at the end of the game if players managed to draft a minimum number of cards required for each specific good. And, of course, the value of each good depends on their worth at the end of game. Each game will also be influenced by one bad effect that could dramatically change the winners and losers for the game.

Although there are plenty of ways to manipulate the game, it feels like a strange tug-of-war stalemate: as one player raises the price of corn stock up, another brings it down, for it to be raised later again… and then be brought down. It may be not very exciting, but at least it feels thematically accurate!

1920 Wall Street ends on a bomb, as in, quite literally, a card representing a bomb, in a somewhat clumsy attempt to reference the tragic events of the Wall Street Bombing at the Financial District. Players count their stocks and tally up victory points in a much less dramatic manner. This is a game of a few highs (the rondel mechanism) and a couple of lows (the presentation and the bombing reference), averaging out in something that is just fine.

ALEXANDRA SONECHKINA

PLAY IT? MAYBE

Buy your copy here

Designer: Perepau Llistosella

Publisher: Looping Game

Time: 45-60 minutes

Players: 2-5

Ages: 12+

Price: £20

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