Stock Market

The idea, from the box and the start of the rules booklet seen in a store photo: everyone starts with money from the banker, each company's current share price is marked on the chart, and you buy shares at the market price and sell them later, hoping for a profit. Information cards move the prices: news such as copper prices rising, the dollar weakening against the rupee, weak sales figures, a good monsoon or tension in the Middle East pushes a company's price up or down by a set amount, and its marker moves on the chart.

Special cards add twists. The store photos show Fraud cards (a share's value at half its market price), Buyer and Seller cards, Currency cards that change values by 10 per cent up or down, and Circuit Filter cards that move a price by 20 per cent, named after the limits Indian exchanges put on how far a share can move in a day. Exactly when you play them, and how the game ends and who wins, is in Ratna's booklet; in most share-trading games the richest player, counting cash and shares at the final prices, wins after an agreed number of rounds, so agree the ending before you start.

How it differs from Business and Monopoly: there is no property to buy and no rent to collect. Your wealth rises and falls with share prices and market news, so it is about when to buy and sell rather than where the dice put you. The closest game we cover is Funskool's Big Bull Junior, a shorter share-market game for children from 8 whose rules are published online.

Is it a copy of a foreign game? We found nothing to suggest so. Its news cards and Chairman cards don't match Stock Ticker, where special dice move six commodity prices, or Acquire, where players found hotel chains with tiles on a grid, and the companies and market terms on the cards are Indian. A share price track moved by event cards is a common idea in share-trading games.