One afternoon, my firstborn of three sons and I sat down to play a quick game of Monopoly Deal.
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Monopoly Deal is a sped-up version of Monopoly in a simple card-game format. Its box suggests you can complete it in just 15 minutes.
Anyone who has played the full version of Monopoly and had a game that spanned hours — sometimes with intervals several days long, stretching the grand finale to sometimes weeks after the game was started — will know how appealing this sounds when you’re time-poor.
Unfortunately, for restless souls like ours, we also didn’t manage to finish quickly with this watered-down version.
We got distracted talking about all the different themed Monopoly board games we’d heard of, Googling them and discovering collectible versions before we came across an Australian-themed one at Big W.
Checking it was in stock at our local first, we abandoned our card game, chucked the L plates on the car and headed to the store to buy it.
Home again, our plans for the rest of the afternoon went out the window as we unboxed our new game and began to compete against each other with our shiny new meat pie and barbecue game pieces.
Laughing at the relatability and chatting away, I said: “Maybe we should make our own Shepp-themed game.”
And, such is the power of our distraction; the next minute, we were armed with pens and notepads, brainstorming ideas for Chance and Community Chest cards, choosing streets from neighbourhoods friends and family live in to include, ordering little plastic houses and hotels online, Googling dimensions and so on.
Before the night was out, I was at my computer, designing cow-patterned play money and property cards using Shepparton, Mooroopna and Kialla street names and the game board with notable Goulburn Valley utilities and transport hubs.
It quickly became apparent the sudden unforeseen assignment I’d just added to my plate was larger than I’d first thought.
It took me a few weeks of finding pockets of spare time to get it all done.
I made game pieces out of jewellery, charms, glue and spray paint.
“Will an Eiffel Tower charm pass for the iconic Shepp Telstra Tower?” I agonised as I hung out the school uniforms.
“It’s not a whole country, just a town, so I can’t use four airports; what else could I use?” I wondered as I cooked dinner.
Finally, I had all the printable elements designed, so I sent them to the printers to be printed on stock similar to the original game cards and money, plus a large glossy sticker to make our game board.
A couple of weeks later, I received it all back and made our foldable board to complete our Shepparton-themed version of Monopoly, which we fondly named Sheppopoly.
Somewhere during the creation journey, we actually finished the Australia-themed game we’d started, but it took a while. Such is the power of our distraction!
It may be the only time our brand new Australia Monopoly gets played, but now we have our own custom-made version.
It took us another few weeks from completing the construction of Sheppopoly to find a window of time to start a game, but we finally did it on the weekend.
Not even one lap around the board and my son had already “won second prize in Shepp’s Got Talent” and scored himself some extra money from the bank, while I was “commissioned to paint a Moooving Art cow” and got paid 100 Monopoly bucks to do it.
The next lap, I charged him rent to live on our street, seeing as I’d bought the fictional property card to match the actual street we live on.
But he got me back when he charged me rent to visit his gran and pop’s (my mum and dad’s) street the next round.
Coming up with your own unique board game from scratch would take a lot of thought and time and a truckload of creativity, seeing as the market is already saturated with highly entertaining games.
But if you already have a favourite game that can be altered and customised to a place, hobby or interest that your family loves, I highly recommend having a crack at making your own version of it.
You already know the method and the rules work; you’re just putting your own twist on it.
If you thought it was fun before, your custom version will be even more enjoyable and give your kids some pretty cool memories for when they’re all grown up.
And if, like us, the game takes you weeks to complete, it will be pretty hard to forget.
Anyway, I’d best be off now to round our board a few more times, especially seeing as “after-school traffic held me up at the ‘Super School’” and I have to go back three spaces.
Ahhh, will we ever crown our first-ever Sheppopoly victor?
Or will we just keep getting chucked in the Welsford St lock-up without passing Go and collecting 200 bucks?
A few more rolls of the dice should decide that.
Senior journalist