Game Overview: Picture Perfect, or Don't Throw Away Your Shot

Anthony Nouveau's Picture Perfect is both an ideal game and less than it could be.

The concept of the game is beautifully presented and clear: You are a photographer who is trying to take the ideal photo at the end of a party. If you have ever been in this situation, whether professionally or just put in the role at a family outing, then you know how impossible this task can be. You're trying to round up folks, organize them without being too bossy, account for their sizes and heights, space them out to make the photo feel balanced, ensure that no one has their face blocked, and — most important of all! — catch no one mid-blink, something that creates an image that will have them and others saying, "Oh, if only..." for decades to come.

For reference, here's one not quite picture perfect from friend and game designer Brian Stormont, who's top middle:

We took numerous timed images ahead of dessert at our second Thanksgiving in 2014 — second Thanksgiving being the holiday that you have with your chosen family, the people you sometimes want to have Thanksgiving with over your actual family — and I both regret and appreciate that the camera caught the celery in mid-fall off my nose from its role as a fake mustache. (Or perhaps I was snorting it up off my clasped hands. Hard to say...)

It's easy to grasp the concept of this game because we've all been there, even if only on the side of those being photographed, with you waiting for some people to figure out where they should stand and whether they want their arm around someone.

In the game, which debuted in Germany in 2020 from Corax Games after a Spieleschmiede crowdfunding campaign and which hit the U.S. market from Arcane Wonders in late 2021, fourteen guests are waiting to be finagled into their "proper" positions, and each guest will have three preference cards chosen at random and tucked into an envelope with their picture on it. Here's a sampling of those cards:

You start with a number of envelopes, and you can look at envelopes one at a time at the start of a round to see who wants what. You look at only one envelope at a time so that you don't mix the cards and so that you're challenged to remember everything using a note-taking system that consists solely of the characters standees, the table, and the placement grid. Those are the game requirements behind that restriction, but in the context of you being a photographer it makes sense that you'd talk with each guest one at a time, devoting your attention to their needs so that you can attempt to understand and satisfy their whims as best as possible.

What doesn't make sense is that two of the guests are a dog and a potted plant, each of which has its own preferences, but roll with it! I love thinking about the plant's desires and whether it's going to be satisfied with this shot afterward — assuming it ends up in the picture at all.

Over the six rounds of the game, you swap guest envelopes with other players and the center of the table, attempting to talk with all the guests while knowing that you can't possibly do so. You're on a deadline, and that photo needs to be taken at six o'clock sharp.

Comparing the four placements following my initial playing

with the BGG team at Gen Con 2021

After the sixth round, you lock each guest into a specific location on the placement grid, or you leave them on the side of the shot. You know that you can't satisfy any of their demands, so better to take the photo while they nip off to the bathroom. Sure, they'll probably be upset, and they won't hire you for future gigs, but ideally you'll make others so happy that you'll come out better in the end.

You pull all the preference cards from each guest envelope one at a time, and for each guest if you've satisfied:

• All three of their preferences, you earn 6 points.
• Two of their preferences, you earn 3 points.
• One of their preferences, you earn 1 point.
• None of their preferences, you lose 3 points.

Once during the game, you can designate one guest in your company a VIP, and a guest scores one additional time for each VIP card it has. Whoever has the most points wins.

Using the acrylic standees, which I bought at Gen Con 2021

While the game concept is brilliant, the execution could be better. In two of the five games I've played on a purchased copy, we've had a situation in which we're supposed to swap envelopes, but it makes no sense to do so. In both cases, the round's event card instructs us in player order to take two envelopes from the middle, add them to our hand, then return two envelopes to the middle. In theory, this event makes sense because we'll each (probably) get new information, and we choose what's available to the next player. I'd like to keep the location of my VIP card a secret, for example, so I want to keep that guest in hand, or perhaps I can put down a guest that the next player has already seen.

In both cases, however, a previous event had us reveal the contents of two envelopes in the middle of the table — which meant that the round's first player had no incentive to do anything other than pick up those two middle envelopes, then put them down again immediately, which is what they did. Thus, one of six rounds was a dud, and we all said, well that's dumb.

I understand why you might not want players having access to all fourteen guests. You want there to be uncertainty about what's best. You want players to learn that guy in the gold suit wants to stand adjacent to the dog, but be ignorant of what the dog wants. Should I risk putting the dog on the board to pick up points for gold guy despite the possibility of losing points for the dog? What preference cards haven't I seen? What could the dog want, and where should I best place it?!

The game also has an auction variant in which you bid decorations to buy access to guests from the other photographers. Again, the concept is great, especially since two decorations are worth 1 point, so as in many auction games, you're trying to buy more points than you've giving away, but the scoring is so rigid (6, 3, 1, 0, -3) that the bids tend to be the same because there's only so much you can gain from access to a guest. If I give you six decorations for a guest, then I need to satisfy two of the preferences just to break even — and what are the chances of doing that, never mind satisfying all three preferences, if you receive this info near game's end when you've just about locked everyone in their spots?

Despite my misgivings, I think Picture Perfect is an ideal party game for those who hate party games. You're throwing yourself into a role, taking the chaos and randomness as it comes, and trying to do your best in a less-than-ideal situation. For more thoughts on the game, check out this overview video, which gives lots of examples of preference cards and how you might (or might not) try to remember who wants what: