Block Party · Sam Baquera

What it is

Block Party is an original party board game for in-person game nights. The iPad shows the board and the minigames on the TV, and every player uses their own iPhone as a controller. You roll, buy houses, collect rent, and the highest net worth wins. Nobody is ever knocked out.

It is for a group in one room, up to 10 people, who want a game night that starts fast. The board, the characters and the minigames are all original, and nothing is copied from anyone else's game.

I made it because I wanted one game that mixes the long game of a board game with the quick fun of party minigames. I designed and built it myself, and 20 friends have tested it on their own iPhones across several game nights, up to 10 at once, over 50 builds.

The lobby street at dusk with string lights and townhomes. Six players stand on round platforms, five on raised glowing platforms with name tags marked ready and one on a low platform, with DJ Sammi standing in the middle of the row

What I designed and built

The 3D neighborhood board in three.js, with houses, rent, a light rail train and a halftime auction
More than 20 minigames, each set in its own place on the map, with models built in code
The SwiftUI iPad host and the iPhone controllers, which find each other over the room's Wi-Fi
Custom character models, modeled from scratch to match each other
A design system of tokens, characters and minigame copy that the build step turns into Swift and JavaScript
A briefing for every minigame, with a looping demo of the move on each phone
A ticket for every ask and an archive entry for every finished piece, 114 tickets and 185 archive entries so far

Decisions

Join over Wi-Fi, with no codes

Phones find the iPad on the room's Wi-Fi by themselves, so a game night starts without typing anything. It began as a direct phone to iPad link, and I moved it to Wi-Fi for a connection that stays stable with 10 players at once. The trade-off is that everyone has to be on the same network as the iPad.

A cable to the TV, not AirPlay

AirPlay adds a noticeable delay, and delay ruins timing games like Tap Sprint. So the iPad plugs into the TV with a USB-C to HDMI cable. The trade-off is that the host needs a cable, which I accepted to keep every tap on time.

Nobody is ever knocked out

The winner is whoever has the highest net worth after a set number of rounds, and minigames pay out coins instead of cutting anyone. A run of bad luck never ends your night early. The trade-off is that the game runs a fixed length, so it cannot end the moment someone pulls ahead.

Rounds became a choice

At my 9 player game night, 10 rounds took about 1.5 hours, which was too long. The party leader now picks 8, 10 or 14 rounds on their phone, and it starts on 8 with 7 or more players. The trade-off is one more choice before Start game, so it begins with a sensible default.

Every minigame stops for a briefing

Before the 3, 2, 1, the TV pans over the game's spot and each phone shows how to play with a looping demo. The count waits until everyone taps Ready. It costs a few seconds before every game, but everyone knows the move before the game starts.