Two of indie gaming’s most beloved brain-benders are trading pixels for cardboard. Baba is You and Party House — the latter one of the 50 miniature titles buried inside the retro anthology UFO 50 — are both being reborn as physical board games, with a pair of Kickstarter campaigns launching on September 15, 2026.
If you’ve never played it, Baba is You is the rare puzzle game that lets you rewrite its own rules mid-level. You push around word tiles like BABA, IS and WIN to reshape what wins, what blocks you, and what’s even solid. Translating that self-referential madness to a physical box sounds nearly impossible, but designer Peter C. Hayward is taking a swing at it alongside original developer Hempuli Oy and publisher Bitewing Games.
The board game reimagines the concept as a 2-player head-to-head strategy game, spanning 7 worlds with 5 scenarios each. That competitive framing is a genuinely interesting pivot — the video game is a solitary experience, so pitting two rule-benders against one another turns Baba’s logic into something closer to a duel. Whoever manipulates the shared rulebook of a scenario best presumably comes out on top.
Party House takes a different tack. In UFO 50, it’s a compact push-your-luck sim about throwing the perfect bash — inviting guests, cramming your venue, and knowing when to call it a night before the cops show up. Designer Jon Perry, who built the original, is adapting it himself as Party House: The Deckbuilding Game, a 1-4 player press-your-luck deckbuilder, also under the Bitewing Games banner.
The mechanical fit here is almost suspiciously clean. The video game was already essentially a deckbuilder in disguise — you draft partygoers, stack effects, and gamble on drawing the right crowd. Moving that to actual cards feels like the format finally arriving at its natural home, with solo play and up to four players expanding on the single-player original.
- Baba is You: The Board Game — 2-player head-to-head strategy, 7 worlds × 5 scenarios; design by Peter C. Hayward, Hempuli Oy, Bitewing Games.
- Party House: The Deckbuilding Game — 1-4 player press-your-luck deckbuilder; design by Jon Perry, published by Bitewing Games.
- Both Kickstarter campaigns go live September 15, 2026.
Pricing and pledge tiers haven’t been detailed yet, which is normal for pre-launch Kickstarters. What’s clear is that Bitewing has assembled the people who actually made these games rather than farming the licenses out to strangers — a promising sign that the tabletop versions will chase the spirit of the originals rather than just their logos. Puzzle purists and party planners alike have a date to circle.
