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

Two maps ship, and the host picks one in the lobby before the game starts. World Tour is the default: a loop of 36 spaces — 20 cities in seven country groups, four airports, six Passport event spaces, three taxes, Detained, a Layover, and the Start Gate where you begin. Harborline is the shorter one, 28 spaces around a seaside town, for a quicker game.

Every rule below is the same on both. Only the furniture is renamed: Harborline's airports are piers, its Passport cards are Tide cards, its Detained is the Dry Dock, its Layover is the Seawall Bench and its Start Gate is The Quay. This page uses World Tour's names.

Passing the start space pays you 200, whether you land on it or roll straight past.

Why the short group matters

Japan has only two cities. Every other group needs three, so Japan is the one set you can finish with a single trade instead of two — and it is already the most expensive corner of the board. A completed Japan with houses on it ends people.

Harborline inverts this: three of its six groups are two-street sets, and they are cheap ones, so there the danger comes from the bottom of the board rather than the top.

Your turn

Roll doubles and you take another turn. Roll them three times in a row and you go straight to Detained 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, and if the clock runs out twice in a row a bot plays your seat until you are back. The host can change or disable the timer.

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 Passport 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 city or airport lets you buy it at the printed price. Decline and it goes to auction instead of sitting there, which is what "pass" costs you: a street you did not want at 150 is one a rival may take for 40.

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: Salvador charges 7 alone, 14 with the set, and 245 with a hotel — on a city 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 city's price, so a house on a 150 city 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 bank owns a finite 28 houses and 10 hotels. Running it dry is a real tactic: four houses sitting on a cheap group can stop everybody else improving anything until somebody sells. Upgrading four houses into a hotel hands those four straight back to the bank, which is exactly why you sometimes should not. The host can make the bank bigger, smaller or unlimited.

Building is not free money either: some Passport cards bill you per house and per hotel you own, so a built-out board carries a running cost as well as an income.

The airports

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

Worth knowing

Airports 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.

Detained

Detained is this board's version of jail — the Dry Dock, if you are on Harborline. You go there by rolling three doubles in a row or being sent by a Passport 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 Layover pays it out.

By default the pot pays whoever lands on the rest space. The host can choose a weighted draw or the trailing player instead. Check the room rules for the payout setting.

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

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Other languages

• English
• Español

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.