Baba is You and UFO 50’s Party House are making the jump to tabletop gaming
Two of my favorite indie games from the best decade are getting physical board game adaptations. Party House, one of the best games included in UFO 50, is getting a deckbuilder, while the mind-bending 2019 puzzler Baba is You is being adapted into a competitive board game.
Party House remains one of the most captivating titles in UFO 50’s lineup. In it, the player’s goal is to throw parties and attract VIP stars without eliciting the attention of the police or fire department. You do that by delicately balancing the number of guests you invite to maximize popularity and cash without losing it all to the police. There’s some randomness in which guests show up, but you can spend cash at a shop between parties to increase your house’s size or buy new guests to add to your rolodex.
Party House: The Deckbuilding Game makes a couple of changes to that core formula. The game now supports four players, merges money and popularity into a single currency, and combines house capacity and the busting threshold into “Trouble,” with players having to move on to the shopping phase when they exceed seven Trouble during a party.
Meanwhile, Baba is You: The Board Game takes the mechanics of a rule-bending puzzle game and applies them to a competitive game in which the goal is to connect an “Is You” descriptor with an “Is Win” descriptor. Neither of these games would’ve been at the top of my list for expected video-game-to-board-game adaptations, but both seem like fantastic fits for the tabletop gaming medium.
Original UFO 50 and Party House developer Jon Perry designed Party House: The Deckbuilding Game. Baba is You designer Hempuli Oy also worked on its board game, although it was created with the help of That Time You Killed Me’s Peter C. Hayward and publisher Bitewing Games.
The Kickstarter campaign to fund both Party House: The Deckbuilding Game and Baba is You: The Board Game will begin on Sept. 15.
