Pretty Ugly (2013)

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all? Of course, me! In Pretty Ugly every player thinks so, but only one will be declared the next top model by the strict jury.

Pretty Ugly is a satirical game about beauty contests and Top Model TV shows. The game is interactive, funny, and contains a good mixture of strategy and luck. The game mimics the absurd real-world beauty mania: players can never completely reach the beauty ideal, the beauty ideal changes over time, and finally, beauty sells!

In Pretty Ugly the players represent models that want to win as many beauty contests as possible. Each turn a player either takes 3 open cards to add to their hand, or plays an action from the hand to adapt their looks to the random (and maybe not so “pretty”) beauty ideal. But be careful: other players can be mean and “uglify” you! After three rounds there is always a beauty contest where the player with the most matching aspects with the beauty ideal wins the most money, and the player with the least matching aspects wins the least money. Then the beauty ideal changes completely and players need to adapt to the new ideal again. After 9 rounds and 3 beauty contests, the player who has won the most money in total wins the game.