You always try to keep up with the latest home-decorating trends, and now that might pay off if your home catches the eye of a judge from Decor Rate magazine. You could win a prize and have your home featured in their publication.
Players start Ulterior Design by revealing one current trend card face up in a central area, then they place one card from their hand face up in their area. On each turn after that, a player plays one of their three hand cards to add to their own house (redecorate), to influence what is trending (by adding a card to the central area), or to sabotage a rival (by adding their card to an opponent's house). Cards are split down the middle with some combination of interior decorations (houseplants, paintings and lamps) on each half, and they must be played so that they overlap at least one half of an already played card.
To end their turn, they refill their hand, then reveal an event card, which may be a judge, a reshuffle, or crickets. Judges are looking for the right number of plants, portraits, or lamps. The player who most closely matches the total number of items in the current trend receives an award; in a tie, the award goes to whoever played least recently as they were trending before it was cool.
The first player to collect three awards wins.
- Cards can be layered and placed on top of each other
- Competitive game to add decor to a room
- Judging features like number of plants or lamps
- Ability to hinder other players' scoring
- Central row reflects trending items
- Ever-changing goal objectives
- Interior design and home decor
- Decorating a room
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- area influence — Players can add to or cover up other players' tableaus to hinder their scoring.
- card laying — Cards can be laid out and played on top of each other to create decorative rooms.
- Pattern Building — Players try to match judging criteria based on the number of items, plants, lamps, etc.
- Set Collection — Players collect items like plants, paintings, and lights.
- Tableau Building — Players build a tableau of room decor elements.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
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- basically once you played this sized game you're not going to go back to the original because of just how satisfying it is to pull a giant Cube and plunk it onto the Matt and just really see the
- I don't think I particularly enjoyed that particular game cuz I'm not really much of a push your luck game
- I do like seeing my tiles flat on a flat surface it just makes it easier to navigate
- it was really great for TI to come over who's the game's designer to come over to me and actually say hey I really want to show you this game and talk to you about um how this plays I want to really share this passion with you
- I also want to say a huge huge thank you to people that came up to say hi to me or thank me for making videos from my lounge room
- it really just makes this hobby so much more enjoyable to know that we have really good people out there that just um can celebrate tabletop gaming here in Australia