The Soap Opera Game

Review by Kerry Lloyd

Euro Games Corporation 34 Rodney St., Port Jefferson Station, NY 11776
Released: 1982
Price: $13.95
Complexity: Beginner
Solitaire Suitability: Low

The Soap Opera Game attempts to provide the players with the sense of coming to the Big Apple to fulfill their dreams of acting in a "daytime drama" (a soap opera). Traveling around the board gains the player part and commercial credits which are necessary to climb The Stairway to the Stars and get into the big time-acting in a real soap opera. The first player to accumulate all the elements of a soap opera plot is the winner.

The game comes in a 10" x 17" x 1/2 box, glaringly red with white printing on the front proclaiming THE SOAP OPERA GAME; pasted on the back is a sticker with a quick, rather glowingly upbeat description of the games intent. Inside can be found the playing board with its "stunning original artwork," a set of blue Opportunity May Be Knocking cards, white Situation cards, two dice, six pawns, a number of small counters labelled "C" and "P"' (for Commercial and Part), and a set of three legal-sized, mimeographed sheets comprising the rules.

Although the artwork on the sturdy playing board is far from the stunning original promised in the rules sheets, the assorted cards and tokens are printed on a quality bristol board which should stand up to repeated use.

The times we played the game (I inveigled a couple of lady friends who are daytime drama fans into testing it with me), it was fairly enjoyable (more from the company than from the game, however). The play is very simplistic, and the rules are very terse and epigrammatic. Unfortunately, the anonymous rules writers have managed to include sufficient ambiguous material that we had questions about several common situations that arose during play. Although the initial playing sessions were not unenjoyable, the game did not induce an intense desire to play it many times.

Players start their pawns in "Franksville," a cabbage at one corner of the outer level of the board and move by dice roll around the board (direction of movement for all players can be reversed during play when a player lands on a particular square), visiting portions of the Big Apple; several detours, basically time-wasters, such as the Empire State Building and Central Park, are included. The players' main aim is collecting acting credits, the tokens for parts and commercials. A total of eight points in such tokens must be accumulated, with commercials counting one and parts counting two. Once the player has earned a reputation (the accumulated acting credits), he may ascend The Stairway to the Stars to reach the inner level provided either of the two bases of the stairs can be reached by an exact count.

On the inner level, the players travel in the circle of the soap opera stars accumulating elements of their own special plot, involving SEX, HEALTH, DISASTER, MARRIAGE, ECONOMY, and CRIME (all necessary for a good soap opera plot. Once one of the players has gotten one of each of the plot elements, he is the winner and is entitled to read his soap opera plot to the other participants.

There is seldom repetition because of the diversity of the cards and their combinations, and the game can go to any player. However, there is little strategy involved in its play; luck is in the die roll. It is basically a fairly standard chase-and- accumulate game, with a non-standard premise (the soap operas). Still, I imagine that dedicated soap opera fans would have fun with the game, since they would have a feeling for the twists and turns of the plots being built; it is not, albeit, likely to enthuse many others.

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