The Party Game genre is a little hard to pin down, but it is essentially a multiplayer game you play with a party of people (that is, more than the usual 2 and anything up to the double figures). It also has a second meaning, as a game you'd play at a party or box social or whatever it is kids are doing these days. Presumably instead of getting drunk until they pass out like normal people.
Taking in account these two possible definitions, a good party game is one that has more than two players, either simultaneously or in turns, that is fairly easy to pick up, sort of aimless (so no one player gets attached to a playthrough when everyone else is bored of it) and is a lot of fun to play. Games that present themselves purely as "Party Games" include Nintendo's Warioware and Mario Party games, but there are many other games that fit the mold such as multiplayer "LAN party" FPS games, sports games, games like Mario Kart and Super Monkey Ball and video game conversions of popular board games. In fact, Nintendo's starting to emphasise this kind of fun togetherness experience (as opposed to the more isolated online multiplayer experience) and the Wii especially will probably be taking full advantage of the market of casual gamers with this kind of lifestyle.
Today's ideas will include one board game that is sort of "jazzed up" for its video game conversion, as well as a board game that has yet to appear as a video game.
RPG Monopoly: A lot of the modern TBS (Turn-Based Strategy) games were inspired by epic board games such as Monopoly and Risk, especially when you consider the resource management aspect, so this idea is sort similar in vein to something like Heroes of Might & Magic (or Master of Magic, even) and really a way for those sort of games to pay back their original inspiration by lending it their trademark fantasy element. Players are replaced with wizards, money with mana, street properties are replaced with sites of power and miscellaneous properties such as the utilities (now Sky and Sea), stations (the four elements) and the jail (which I'm thinking could be the magic-zapping ice prison that Merlin found himself in during the Excalibur movie) all have their new equivalents. Buying houses is now buying guardian monsters to defend sites you've enchanted, and anyone passing through them will lose mana (which doubles as a wizard's lifesource) with the magical traps/guardians set up there. A wizard that loses all mana, including that which comes from life-stealing from his various owned sites (mortgages, in other words) is defeated and banished to.. I dunno.. Detroit.
Despite these minor cosmetic changes to the game, there will be a few modifications to the core rules; but not too many, since Monopoly is already as solid a game design as you're likely to find. The Chance and Community Chest cards will be changed slightly to reflect the new game system (no beauty contests for one thing). The Free Parking rule will be optional - in this game, "banker" mana will come from the empty cosmos and return there, though a wizard on the Free Parking (maybe Stonehenge?) spot will be able to channel that lost mana. There may be minor cash prizes along the route too (which appear as magic ores) for any player to find, which shouldn't effect the game too much but still be an interesting bonus. Obviously all game rules that aren't core to the original game will have options to toggle them on/off, so that the option to play Monopoly in the classic sense will be available.
I figure a semi-cliché fantasy setting will make the game far more appealing to players who have long since considered the normal version a boring family experience thing they used to do as kids, despite the fact nothing has really changed with this version. There would also be some room for video game effects and CGI animation as wizards pass through unfriendly enemy territory and fight off the dangers there (which in Monopoly terms would be landing on a property owned by another player). Of course, player interaction would still be limited to rolling the dice and making decisions about buying/selling properties, but it could still look boss to have an animated sequence where a powerful wizard fights off the equivalent of a Hotel (which would be some massive demon thing, based on the magical alignment of the character who summoned it).
My second idea was going to be a simulation of one of those board games that are actually fun, like Fireball Island, Operation or Mouse Trap, which have way too many pieces to give it a meaningful value of longevity for a five year old receiving it at Xmas. In fact, the sheer inconvenience of missing pieces is why simulated board games (and jigsaw puzzles, come to think of it) are becoming more popular than their real-life counterparts. Or at least they should be.
Instead, my second idea comes from an old favorite of mine: Kings & Things. The game is essentially a fantasy war-mongering board game similar to Risk, but with a much more advanced "random" element, especially when it comes to recruiting fantastical creatures for your army. The board itself is also randomly created out of several dozen hex tiles, that are randomly assigned to a hexagon-shaped map in a circular pattern. You can then choose a nationality based on your starting tile (a Jungle hex tile would give you the Zulu-esque tribe to control, whereas the Plains would use a more classic medieval kingdom) and build your armies and power by invading adjacent hex tiles, eventually taking on the combined armies of your human opponents.
Although it sounds fairly complicated - players have a 12-step turn, as they go through what they've earned from their land, recruitment and mobilization stages and so on - the presence of a computer AI will make it a lot easier to get to grips with. What you're left with a fantasy strategy game that's built for multiplayer, has a lot of weird and wonderful creatures to encounter and recruit - including some very bizarre heroes, ranging from multicolored knights to folk legends, the recruitment of which uses a similarly random "coin flip" system - and is different every time you play. The game also has a sense of humor about it, with a detailed history about dwarves getting annoyed every time a new race moves in, a legendary bandit whose legacy and reputation survives and flourishes through his (often female) descendants, and an infamous assassination of an important figurehead by a disgruntled penguin with a crossbow. Many of the recruitable creatures and heroes are similarly bizarre and amusing.
Since armies both randomly recruited per turn and hidden from other players, it's sometimes a matter of simply bluffing your opponent with a high stack of terrible units (like brownies) to take over crucial land without retribution. Adversely, a small force of powerful entities could wipe out a much larger army but remain undetected because of its small size. Instead of regular "true" stategic games, which tend to be grounded in "what can this player with this amount of experience do in this amount of time" sort of rationalizations, the game could go either way for a player at any time, provided the losing player can fool his opponent into thinking his game is less hopeless than it actually is. That way, although it'd be possible to lose one seemingly easy campaign, it would be equally possible to win a campaign that seems impossible. I think these factors would make a video game version of this board game pretty popular indeed with new-comers and veterans of TBS games alike.
