Unhinged Board Games
A variety of party games, each stupider than the last
2014-Present · Lenses: Games, Touchable Stuff, Useless Nonsense · Roles: Concept, Writing, Design, Game Design, Puzzle Design, Fabrication
I used to invent a new board game every year and make my friends play it at my birthday party. Each of these was stupider than the last.
The first game I made, Cards required players to build a die out of a giant cardboard box and throw it from the top of a human pyramid to move forward. The game pieces were random plastic things I found around my house and the game board was a piece of old cardboard I found by a dumpster. I made my parents play once and they were deeply confused.
Dice, conversely, was played with handwritten cards that tell you to do things like "write a letter to your bed to advance your game piece." Old business cards given to me by friends and acquaintances were involved. I think you also needed an oboe for part of it.
In Board Game, you ran around a room trying to earn more wooden boards than the other players. One card involved secretly starting a fire in a trashcan, which didn’t end as badly as it should have. The game board for this was drawn on the disgusting carpet of my old apartment with Sharpie the week before the landlord replaced it with laminate, so it was probably a one-time thing.
The point of Video Game was to earn the most old VHS tapes and DVDs by competing in trivia and feats of strength. In my experience, this game is a great way to get rid of old physical media you don’t want anymore.
Team Game involved everybody swapping clothes. It was a mess. We don't need to talk about Team Game.
The last game I was developing was called System: The Game, the objective of which is to game the system. As players progress, they're given chances to change the rules in their favor. They write these rules in the instruction manual, changing the game permanently (until someone else creates a rule canceling their rule). It gets more complex each time it's played, but that's kind of the point. It got too complicated and I didn’t finish it in time for my birthday. But if you’d like to play it, shoot me an email and I’ll finish it (and also invite you to my next birthday party).