The rules, in full

If you have played a property trading board game before, most of this will be familiar. What follows is the complete set of rules for kiraya.io, including the handful that are deliberately different from the game in the cupboard — and the actual numbers, so you can work out whether a trade is worth taking.

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Everything below is how the game really works — no simplified summary

The board

Harborline is a loop of 28 spaces: 15 streets in six colour groups, four piers, four Tide Chart event spaces, two taxes, the Dry Dock, the Seawall Bench, and The Quay where you start.

Passing The Quay pays you 200, whether you land on it or roll straight past.

Why two-street groups matter

Three of the six groups have only two streets. They are much easier to complete than a three-street group, which makes Tideflat Row and Cannery District far more valuable early than their prices suggest. A cheap two-street set with houses on it will quietly bankrupt people.

Your turn

Roll doubles and you take another turn. Roll them three times in a row and you go straight to the Dry Dock instead of moving.

If you take too long, the obvious move is played for you after 90 seconds, so one person walking away cannot freeze the table. The host can change or disable that.

1. Roll two dice
   You move that many spaces around the loop.
2. Do what the space says
   Buy it if it is unowned and you can afford it, pay rent if somebody owns it, pay the tax, draw the Tide Chart card, or nothing at all.
3. Build or trade if you want to
   You can put up houses and send trade offers at any point on your own turn.
4. End your turn
   Unless you rolled doubles, in which case you go again.

Buying and rent

Landing on an unowned street or pier lets you buy it at the printed price. Declining leaves it unowned — there is no auction.

Base rent is 12% of the printed price, so a 150 street charges 18. Owning every street in a colour group doubles it, and that is before you build.

Read that table again

A hotel on a mid-priced street charges 35 times what it did unimproved. That jump is the entire game. Somebody with a completed set and two houses on it is not slightly ahead, they are about to end somebody.

The same maths on the cheapest group: Mud Lane charges 7 alone, 14 with the set, and 245 with a hotel — on a street that cost 60.

Building

You can build once you own every street in a colour group and none of them is mortgaged. A house costs half the street's price, so a house on a 150 street is 80.

Four houses become a hotel at level five. Selling a building refunds half what it cost.

Even build is on by default: houses go up and come down evenly across the group, so you cannot stack five on the one street everybody lands on while the others stay bare. The host can switch it off.

The piers

The four piers cost 200 each and charge rent by how many the owner holds — nothing to build, nothing to complete.

Worth knowing

Piers are the most reliable early income on the board — they need no set and no cash to develop — but they cap out at 200, which a single house on a mid-priced street beats. Good to hold early, poor to hold late.

The Dry Dock

The Dry Dock is this board's version of jail. You go there by rolling three doubles in a row or being sent by a Tide Chart card.

Once there you can pay 75 to get out and move, or try for doubles. After two failed attempts you pay anyway and move — or, if you cannot pay, you are released without paying.

You still collect rent while you are in there, unless the host has switched that off — in which case being sent to the dock costs you income as well as turns.

Running out of money

Owing more than you hold does not put you out immediately. The turn pauses and you raise the money.

Selling buildings refunds half their cost. Mortgaging a deed raises half its printed price — 80 on a 150 street — and it earns no rent until you clear it, which costs a premium: that same deed costs 90 to redeem.

You cannot mortgage a street while its group still has buildings on it. Sell the buildings first.

Only when there is genuinely nothing left to sell do you go bankrupt, and whatever you had goes to whoever you owed. The host can switch mortgaging off entirely, which makes the game considerably harsher.

Trading

You can offer any mix of deeds and cash to any other player on your turn. They can accept, refuse, or counter — which is the part most online versions leave out, and the reason a negotiation here can go somewhere instead of dying on the first no.

Mortgaged deeds cannot be traded until they are cleared. Streets with buildings on them cannot be traded either.

Trading is where games are actually decided. Nobody completes a set by rolling well alone in a four-player game — somebody has to be talked out of the street you need, usually by being offered a set of their own.

The vacation pot

Taxes and fees do not vanish into the bank. They collect in a pot, and landing on the Seawall Bench pays it out.

By default the draw is weighted towards whoever is behind — by rank, not by cash, so a runaway leader cannot make it a certainty. With four players the default odds are roughly 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 percent from richest to poorest. The host can make it an even draw, always pay whoever is last, or simply pay whoever landed on it.

How the game ends

Two ways. Everyone else goes bankrupt — or the round limit is reached, and the highest net worth wins: cash, plus every deed at its printed price, plus everything built on them.

The round limit is the biggest deliberate departure from the classic rules, and it exists because the classic game does not really end. Almost nobody has ever finished one by the book; they get abandoned. Twenty rounds is about half an hour, forty is an evening, sixty is a long one, and you can turn it off.

What is deliberately different

Questions people ask

Keep reading

• Play Monopoly online freeThe quickest way into a game, and what to expect once you are in.
• Playing with friendsGetting everyone into the same room, across whatever devices they own.

kiraya.io is an independent game inspired by the property-trading board game genre. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Hasbro, Monopoly, or any other board-game brand or trademark holder.