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The Concept of Beauty Takes a Satirical Twist in ‘Pretty Ugly’

Dec 5, 2013

An interesting Kickstarter project which needs a bit of a boost in its final twelve days is Pretty Ugly from Karma Games. The card game takes a satirical swing at our modern concept of what’s beautiful and looks to not only be a rather funny game but one in which has a bit of a lesson to teach as well. The project is currently at the 65% funding level and a pledge of $29.00 would score you a copy.

From Karma Games:

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? In Pretty Ugly, every player thinks they’re the prettiest, but there can only be one top model.

Pretty Ugly is a satirical card game about beauty contests and Top Model TV shows. This interactive, fun game contains a good mixture of strategy and luck. The game mimics absurd real-world beauty mania: players can never completely reach the beauty ideal, the beauty ideal changes over time, and finally, beauty sells!

The game was developed during 9 months and was heavily playtested more than 500 times with more than 1000 players. Also, established game designers like Bernd Eisenstein, Peer Sylvester and Hartmut Kommerell playtested Pretty Ugly and their feedback helped to optimize the game and make it very balanced.

In Pretty Ugly, the players represent models who want to win as many beauty contests as possible. Each turn a player either takes 3 open cards to add to their hand, or plays an action to adapt their looks to the changing, but maybe not so “pretty” beauty ideal [“I need some leg hair!”], uglify other players [“Sorry Sarah, but your face is way too pretty. Take this face instead!”], or bribe the judges.

Unlike other card games, look cards can either be used as a look or an action, but never both at the same time.

But be careful: other players can be mean and “uglify” you too! Every three rounds there is a beauty contest where the player with most matching aspects with the beauty ideal wins the most money. Then players change the beauty ideal and need to adapt to it. Whoever has the most money after 9 rounds and 3 beauty contests wins the game.

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Jeff McAleer

Founder/Editor-in-chief of The Gaming Gang website and host of The Gaming Gang Dispatch and other TGG media for fifteen years, Jeff takes on any and all sorts of games but is especially ready to tackle roleplaying games and strategy games. He's been involved with the hobby since he was just a wee grade school lad, over four decades ago.