Review: THE Yuppie GAME
Publisher: Waddington’s
Year: 1985
Tagline: are you yup to the challenge?
Players: 2 to 4

how we met

I found THE Yuppie GAME very recently at a thrift shop that I had previously almost dismissed for pricing their games and puzzles so high. But good thing I returned because, apparently, even the thrift shop knows no one wants THE Yuppie GAME. I paid $1.99 and walked out with my head full of white wine and canapés.

This was one of my favorite finds in a long time in terms of how weird and rare the game seems.

how it plays

In THE Yuppie GAME, each player starts with $50,000 cash and will win when they have achieved:

1. $150,000 cash
2. A marriage partner
3. A career (min salary $40k)
4. A yupling (that’s a kiddo)
5. A private school for said yupling
6. A living space
7. A yupmobile

All seven items are needed for someone to be considered worthy of winning THE Yuppie GAME.

A player starts their turn by rolling the die and moving that number of spaces. Most spaces on the board will cause the player to draw a card, hoping to achieve those elusive yuppie dreams. Some spaces on the board will allow the player to steal a dream from another player. Another space on the board leads you to the largest deck in the game, Yupheavals. These cards can be bad. They may require you to lose a turn, to pay a “poor taste tax” to others, or they may upset all the progress you have made so far! Some of the cards are good though and result in you moving your pawn further along or getting more cash, upsetting fellow yuppies, etc.

The goal is to move around the board and collect as many cards as you can. Each time you land on another player’s home base, roll again. If you land on or pass your own home base, this represents one year in your trying-to-be-a-yuppie life. It’s time to do some accounting:

• Get paid any salary and other income owed
• Pay any annual expenses
• Pay off your Yuppie Express card if able (if you drop below $5k during play, take $10k from the bank and turn your Yuppie Express card over)
• Then continue play
  If you land directly on your home base, you also get $5,000 and roll again!

Once a yuppie has all of the required cards to win the game, they still must play until they pass or land on their home base.

how it went

Look, THE Yuppie GAME is not perfect. I tend to be interested in games with a niche topic that have a bunch of humorous cards in them. The game I created, Panic Mode, is precisely that. I was looking forward to this 1985 time capsule, and in a lot of ways I was not disappointed.

Yes, the cards are often very funny and the poking of fun is relentless and brutal. I know the term yuppie as a thing, but I don’t know the subject so intimately that I could really predict all the ways in which yuppies would be ridiculed in the cards.

And as much fun as the cards are, there are some blatant drawbacks to gameplay:

1. It takes forever to get around the board, so the one year in your yuppie-hopefulness is probably 45-60 minutes in real life. Making the first yuppie to achieve their goals have to protect their cards long enough to reach their home base is a stretch.
2. The type is so small! It’s so small. You end up fighting to read each card, which not only contributes to the time spent but also starts to chip away at your enjoyment.
3. The cards get stolen and moved and discarded constantly. I’m all about some take-that mechanics, but it felt like such an uphill battle to even get a few cards toward the goal. And then, many times, when cards were removed it was from gameplay and not to other players, removing them from play entirely. And, like, we felt entitled to those cards! As gameplay continues, yuppies tend to start having more and more cards in front of them, but it takes a great deal of time.
4. Some of the cards are confusing. You are often getting cards in which you buy something – from a magazine subscription to season tickets. Sometimes you pay the bank, sometimes you pay another player. It was unclear if all of these cards are required, so I assumed that they are. It was unclear if you should keep them in front of you. Some, like the subscription, seem to come back as references in other cards while others don’t. This could be commentary on conspicuous consumerism. It could also be bad design.

I played THE Yuppie GAME with Bill, Jaime and Aaron on a recent Friday evening after we visited the local brewery and played a few rounds of Monopoly Deal over dinner.

In our play, only a few notable things happened. One was Bill’s steady play, which he brings to most games. He was pretty consistently in good shape, stealing cards and getting stolen from in turn. Always in good shape but never running away with it.

Another was my late-game, mother-of-all Yupheaval cards, which removed all of my cards in play and half of my money. I became super broke. Aaron was handing me $10,000 here and there, because…

Aaron strongly disliked the game. He played like a champ, but he lost interest the soonest and would warn you the most fiercely away from THE Yuppie GAME. He probably lost a BMW or something.

Jaime had the most lose a turn cards. Maybe six? A lot. But she also enjoyed the most cards in front of her in late-game. Again, five or six. She was well on her way to yuppiedom.

And that’s why when we all decided we couldn’t go on any further, Jaime won THE Yuppie GAME!

play or pass

Pass. The cards are funny, if dated (and if you can read the small print). But the progress is mind-numbing, and the yupheavals are soul-crushing. I expected life in yuppiedom to be sweet and easy, but it was unfair and painful.