RETRO: ‘Happy New Year’ Gets Too Real Even In 2019
Board game themes come in all flavors: Piracy on the sea, space adventurers, the crushing reality of struggling paycheck to paycheck while just trying to make it through the year, and super heroes.
Somewhere along the line, someone forgot to tell Chad Valley Games that board games are supposed to be an escape from our dreary reality, not a reminder of it.
Happy New Year is a play-to-move game with money management mechanics released in 1960 by the English company Chad Valley. The goal of each player is to save up 100 Eurobucks, declare “Happy new year”, skip a turn, then land on December 31. It’s a weird sequence of events, but that’s how you win.
Each player starts the game with 13 normal playing cards. These cards allow the player to move a number of spaces of the value of the card. However, the card played must also be of the correct suit. Each quarter of the board shows a different suit which must be played. If the player doesn’t have the correct suit of card, well, then maybe you can help me understand what happens.
“He must play a card of the correct suit, if he has one. (Penalty : £25). If he has no card of the correct suit, he can either demand a card of the correct suit from any other player. (Penalty for failing to supply a card when able to do so : £25), or pick up his own cards without payment.”
