Party Up, Party Down

UFO 50 was one of the coolest gaming artifacts of the past few years, a collection of fifty unique video games by Derek Yu, Jon Perry, and a handful of other developers that pitched itself as a digital excavation of a long-lost 8-bit console. The collection was special for many reasons, but my favorite trick was the way its creators employed modern design principles that contrasted the system’s hardware and input limitations. For example, Party House. Designed by Jon Perry, this was a full-fledged solitaire deck-building game that fictively predated Dominion by over two decades. Now, in a design ouroboros, Perry is shifting Party House to tabletop. Check out my sick group of friends. (UFO 50 version) If nothing else, Party House is more relatable than most gamified topics. You want to throw a party. A big party. But you also don’t want the cops and/or the fire marshal to bust up the festivities. In the UFO 50 original, that meant building out your Rolodex, expanding your apartment to…