An update on House of Whack…

No matter how many times I brought up the fact that the printer was able to create nice glossy, tri-fold cards that didn’t fall apart, they would not acknowledge it. They either would completely ignore the message or say ridiculous things like the nice glossy cards were identical to the horrible cards that fell apart.

Their final solution was to laminate the cards. This initially looked okay, but then the laminate started to blister and wrinkle. Also, they wanted an extra $950.

Since all the other cards they have done look great, I decided to just redesign the entire Guest deck as non-folding cards about 2/3rds the size of the current cards. One of my original designs involved a card that could be rotated one way or the other, like some Magic cards I had seen. Mischa reminded me of this design when he suggested it himself. I had been so enamored with the cleverness of the trifold concept that I had abandoned this rotating card idea.

So now I am almost done recreating the Guest cards in the new format. This has also given me an opportunity to tweak a few abilities and make some edits. Since the manual, box and quick start guide make reference to tri-fold cards, I will have to include an errata sheet explaining the change. This will also be an opportunity to get people to go to the web site and download the latest version of the manual. There have been some significant changes to the play mechanics. Or rather, I have a collection of house rules I recommend that people use.

I’ve designed the game so that it can be “patched,” updated, and modded pretty easily, which is coming in handy now.