Board Game Peer Review: Portobello Market

For this week of the game analysis course, my group was tasked with playing Portobello Market and reviewing what Group 2 had written about the game.

This post is a review of Anton L’s analysis of the game, which can be read here.

Basic Game Summary

Portobello Market is a game for two to four players where you place market stalls along the streets of a city to collect points. A player’s turn can consist of up to four actions, depending on which of three available action tokens they decide to spend on their turn. Different actions a player can perform include setting up stalls and placing visitors, which determine score multipliers players will receive on a chosen street.

There’s a special piece called the bobby, which is placed out on the board at the start of the game. Players can only set up stalls on streets surrounding the space the bobby is placed in. The bobby can be moved to any adjacent space at any point during player’s turns, this can be done as many times as possible and doesn’t cost any action to perform. However, moving the bobby comes at a cost, unless the player wants to move it across a street where they own the majority of stalls. If they don’t, they either simply lose one point of score for each time they move. If they want to move the bobby across a street on which another player has the majority of stalls, the player moving the bobby loses one point of score, and the player with majority gains one point.

Player score is calculated when they own one or more stalls on a filled up street, and that street has had visitor tokens placed on both its ends. The player’s score is calculated as the value of stall spaces they own, multiplied by the visitor bonus. There are three different colors of visitors, and different combinations of colors give different multipliers.

The game ends after the black visitor token has been placed on the board.

Best side to the game

In his analysis, Anton argued that the best part of Portobello Market is how you have to adapt your strategy depending on the amount of players. He also brought up the game’s simplicity and how it’s easy to learn and easy to master.

I agree that playing with differing amounts of players gives the game a lot of variety, and can help mix things up on repeated playthroughs. My personal pick for the best side of the game would be the simplicity point.

Portobello Market is an incredibly simple game, which makes it very easy for a new player to pick up. While the only thing you really do in the game is place stalls, visitors and move the bobby; the way score is calculated and the way the bobby ties into placement of stalls gives the game an element of strategy. This makes it so although the game is easy to learn, you do need to play it for a bit to come up with optimal stall placement and bobby movement strategies.

Worst side to the game

Anton felt that the worst side to Portobello Market is the low cost of moving the bobby. He also thought that it’s unfair that players won’t get score for placed out stalls if they’re not on a completely full street.

Both of these issues are at their core about score distribution. Bobby movement doesn’t affect players’ scores significantly enough, and score lost from placing stalls in streets that are never filled out is too significant. I feel like these points are both significant balance issues with the game, and might need adjustment for more fair play.

Losing stalls to streets that end up unfinished can happen particularly easy in the beginning of the game, when the map is empty and players are just starting out with their placement of stalls. A player can put a stall on a street on the left part on the map, only for the flow of play to end up moving the bobby towards the right part of the map, leaving that stall completely useless. Since every player’s supply of stalls is limited, this feels like a punishment far too severe for something that is near impossible for players to predict so early in the game.

Core system

In his analysis, Anton stated that he believes the game’s core system is the placement of market stalls. He didn’t elaborate much, not listing any properties or behaviors or the like, but I can agree with this assessment.

Placing market stalls is the basic component of the game which lets players collect score. The stalls, of course, are the objects in this system. The properties of the stalls are the limited amount and their basic value, one stand is worth one score, multiplied with the value of the space they’re placed on, multiplied by visitor bonus. Stall behavior is the simple act of being placed on the board.

The relationships are the interesting parts of stalls, as they are connected with every single other component of the game. Stalls are connected to turn tokens, as placing one stall spends one turn value. Stalls are connected to the bobby, as where stalls can be placed out is dictated by where the bobby is placed. Stalls are connected to visitor tokens, as visitor tokens will affect the final score of stalls placed on the board. And finally, stalls are connected to the board and score, as the placement of stalls, combined with the value of board spaces, combined with the placement of visitors and whether the street is filled out or not, will calculate the player’s final score gain.

Most interesting system

Anton did not argue for a most interesting system of the game, or if he did I could not find it in his analysis.

Personally, my favorite system of the game is the system of the bobby. While stalls are the basic components of the game’s play, and visitor multipliers add randomness to the game, bobby movement contributes greatly to the game’s element of strategy.

The bobby is, of course, the object. Its property is its position. Its behavior is the way it can be moved and the rules of this mechanic. It has a relationship with score, in the way players have to pay score in most cases of moving the bobby. The bobby’s relationship with the stalls, and the combination of the mechanics of its movements, is what brings strategy to the game.

Without the bobby, players would be able to just place out stalls wherever they want on the board, this would make the game seem very basic and disorganized. The bobby is effectively a cursor, determining the area in which players can act. Being limited to only placing stalls in the area the bobby is in forces players to interact and compete for stall spots in the same space. Being able to move the bobby, at a price, lets a player position the active area of play to somewhere that could benefit them in filling streets with stalls. Moving the bobby could also be an act of sabotage, as mentioned in an earlier section, as moving the area of play far away from unfilled streets will render those stalls useless for the rest of the game.

Target Audience

Anton assessed that the game is intended for ages 8 and up as indicated by its box, and didn’t disagree with this label. He argued that the game’s simplicity lends itself to being a good family game, but stated that the game’s box art seems dull and unfitting, and might put new players off.

I agree that Portobello Market is a good family game. It’s an incredibly simple game, and easy to learn. Despite the basic game structure, it does have a bit of strategy to it, which may be affected by player count. This gives the game variety in play and makes it a bit easier to come back to several times.

Analysis Review

Anton’s analysis of Portobello Market was short, but he made apt observations about the game’s design. He forgot to mention, or at least properly explain, which game system he thought was the most interesting, and he could’ve elaborated more on the game’s core system. His text could also have benefited from some more proof-reading, as there were some spelling errors and broken sentences. Other than those oversights, the points he brought up in his analysis were reasonable and there wasn’t much to disagree with on his assessments.