When you Have a Cool Idea and look it up and someone has already done it (Complimentary)
While delving through UFO 50, a game in the collection that I got absolutely sold on was Party House.
Here's the pitch: it's the 80's and you are in charge of throwing a house party; you have a rolodex with contacts in it and each party, people show up and give your party a 'popularity' score; you then use that popularity afterward to add more people to your rolodex, resulting in more guest options for future parties. Some partygoers also pay money to be there - the money can be used to upgrade your house and allow more partygoers. Based on which scenario you pick, your goal is to get multiple of the available 'star' guests. The player who gets the requisite number in one party wins.
Some guests increase popularity based on other conditions, some guests cause trouble (fucking JAMES) and if your event gets too rowdy (or too full), the cops or firefighters will show up and bust you. It's honestly a fucking blast of a game.
A thought I constantly had in the back of my head while playing was 'this could totally work as a physical card game'. Now obviously this is oversimplification but at its core, it's a deck builder. You draw cards from your rolodex and play them, scoring at the end of the round based on how many spots you have available.
I was thinking I could make some slight modifications and use regular cards with numbers and suits representing the popularity and money bonuses / costs and play with my kids (it's one of their favorites in the UFO 50 library as well) but doing a cursory google search, I find some absolute genius is like ten steps ahead of me having taken all of the graphics from the game and turned them into printables with 'modified for 4 players' rule sheets and more. Free. You can just download and get printing.
All I needed was some slightly thick cardstock and, well
PARTY HOUSE CARD GAME TIME BAYBEE!!
It rules?
I still have a fair amount of work to do because I don't have a paper cutter (aka a 'slicey boi') so it's just scissors or razor blades at the moment but I'm pretty excited about the project so far; there's something satisfying about cutting cardstock. Can't explain it.
Anyway as I was trying to take these photos, the cats wanted to be involved so we'll close out with that.
