The long awaited game collection UFO 50 had finally come out a few weeks ago. Now, I had the game on my shortlist of games I should put on my bingo card when I finally clear a line, and I thought that I should casually check it out.

I was a fool to put this game on my shortlist.

UFO 50 is a game collection in the truest sense of the word: everything really do be a full game in its own right. So for the sake of practicality, UFO 50 as a whole is off my shortlist, since I feel that’d take like, months. I will, however, talk about one game. See, I rolled Quinn K’s There Swings a Skull: Grim Tidings from my bingo, and given the current climate disasters and the horrible mood I’ve been in for the past few months, I’m really not ready to swing into that.

But do you know what I am ready for? A party.

Party House is one of the many games of UFO 50, where you’re trying to throw the ultimate party. Invite old friends, invite dancers, invite wrestlers, invite comedians, invite totally legitimate businessmen, invite counselors… almost all guests provide you with more popularity and cash at the end of every successful party. The goal? Gather the clout to gain the interests of star guests, and invite four in a single party before the Age of Partying is over!

Mechanically, Party House is a deckbuilder. At the end of every day you spend popularity points to add potential new invites and spend money to expand the house so you can invite more people to the party for the day. Now, one of the challenges is that there’s no true “card removal”, so you can’t be freely picking people. I’ve had a few games where I had enough star guests, but lost because I couldn’t draw them. However, there’s plenty of ways to navigate the draw. Cab drivers and private investigators will bring in any specific guest, so you can bring in one of those star guests, or maybe an auctioneer if you’re hurting for cash, or a cute dog to bring down the rowdiness. Security guards and wrestlers can boot people from the party to free up more space. Maybe get rid of that PI or a stylist (improves the popularity of any guest) after you use their services so you can avoid paying them for the money grindset, or toss out one of those bastard wild buddies for a chance at a star guest, or well, just anyone else that won’t start shit.

So here’s the second challenge: trouble. Some guests bring trouble, and when there’s too much trouble, the police shuts down the party, completely canceling the day. You’re also forced to disinvite one guest for a day, but honestly, fine by me. There’s some trouble mitigation like hippies or counselors, and of course, you can kick a guy out before things get too rowdy. However, you may want to invite trouble into the party for the bonuses they provide, if the safer alternatives don’t offer enough, and a few units actually synergize with trouble. Just hope you don’t draw all the trouble before a safety net shows up. Honestly, the default wild buddy units like to fuck this up.

I’ll be real with you: I swear that the wild buddies are hardcoded to show up together. There were multiple situations where I had two wild buddies in a row and think, “there’s no way a third one will show up” like a naive fool, and lo and fucking behold, the wild buddies have ruined the vibes. I had one instance where two showed up and had a spy check the door to see a third wild buddy. I gave the wild buddy the boot, invited the next guest in, and you don’t understand how I felt when it was the fourth wild buddy. None of the other trouble making guests gave me as much trouble as this gang of shitheads. ACAB but… maybe the police can keep the wild buddies I hand them in jail for a little bit longer.

Meanwhile, the star buddies have their own quirks. The alien of the first scenario is basic, high cost but not as much as others. The dinosaur is incredibly cheap, but you know, it’s a dinosaur, that’s going to raise trouble. Genies are expensive, but they can also summon other guests; honestly, my favorite wins were from getting a bunch of genies and having them all summon each other for an immediate win. I loved it when I got them as a random star guest choice.

Speaking of which. When you beat a UFO 50 game its cartridge becomes gold. However, you can turn it a nice shining cherry red if you accomplish another, harder goal. For Party House, you have to win five games in a row with randomized decks of guests.

This was a journey that I was obsessed with. Sometimes I got a game with no drivers, leaving me to the luck of the draw. Sometimes I had games with no serious money making opportunities except from celebrities, who I don’t like to invite because they bring two extra guests and you’ll run into a canceled party for breaking fire safety laws. A lot of the time I ran out of days because of those miserable wild buddy assholes.

But under these randomized decks, you’re really pushed to learn about the different guest types and how they synergize. The photographer can take a picture of a group of dancers so you can get their group popularity bonus a second time. Social climbers grow in popularity when they enter a party, and you can grow them further by having a grill master or basketball player “reset the deck” so they can enter again. And well, I guess wild buddies are okay if writers are writing about their shithead activities for popularity bonuses.

So, after 16 hours, I managed to get my streak of five wins and my first cherry. Party House is a great game that I feel that people can easily get into because it’s not as busy or demanding as other games I’ve played in the pack, but it has enough depth to keep things interesting. Honestly, it might be one of the best games in UFO 50, though, I say that knowing that there’s still a lot of games I haven’t even touched yet.