Project Catwalk (2022)
a dress-up card game completed for a mobile and ubiquitous games class at the University of California, Irvine.
The final assignment prompt for this class was very loose: create a card game of 40 uniform cards. At our first group meeting the one thing we knew was that we wanted to make a party game with cute animals. After a bit of brainstorming, I realized how nicely these ideas might work for a dress-up game. It would give us the opportunity to experiment with subjective prompts and aesthetic-based natures of deck-based gameplay.
The first issue we ran into was how to execute the “dress-up” aspect of this game as most cards have a white background with two sides. The solution produced was the use of a transparent card.
We tested a few different printing methods and ultimately settled on printing on clear acrylic. Then we made art for accessory cards that could be placed upon pet cards. Players can place these cards in any non-uniform way they see fit- in playtesting some people used boots as a top, stacked hats, and layered pieces.
During a game players follow these rules:
Separate the cards into 3 groups: clothes/accessories, animals (character), and abilities
Each player picks a character
Shuffle clothes/accessory cards
Shuffle ability cards and draw 1 each
Pick a player to be the “judge” through any arbitrary method (e.g. tallest, oldest, dumbest person)
The judge role will be passed clockwise every round
The judge chooses any theme for the round (can be as subjective or nonsubjective as the judge sees fit e.g. anime convention attendee, that one weird 8th grader, 21st-century philosopher)
