Paper Mario Party - Build Your Own Mario Party Style Board Game

I bought Super Mario Party for the Nintendo Switch for my kids as an Easter present (although, honestly, it was more of a “something to do during the Covid-19 safer-at-home order” present), and it’s been a big hit.

However, we’re also trying to limit our kids’ screen time and not just let them spend the whole quarantine as TV and tablet zombies, so after playing quite a few games, we had an idea: let’s build our own Mario Party board game, and play it for real!

We improvised the rules and made all our own game pieces and everything, and then like good engineers, we iterated.

We’ve played it quite a few times now, making little tweaks each time, and it’s actually pretty great. Vastly more fun than Candyland or Chutes and Ladders for all involved. The kids get to get up and move around during the “minigames,” and the adults get to play a game that actually involves some semblance of strategy rather than just rotely doing whatever a card or spinner says on every turn.

1. How to Play

The object of the game is to collect Stars. Each Star costs 3 Coins. To get Coins, you have to win “minigames,” which are all things like: Staring Contest, Thumb Wrestling, Tic-Tac-Toe, etc. The game ends when one player collects three Stars.

Before a winner is declared, two Bonus Stars are awarded. Whoever has the most Stars when after the bonuses are awarded is the winner!

2. What You Need

The only things you need are:

• 1 six-sided dice
• Some kind of timer. I just used my phone, but an hourglass “borrowed” from another board game would work too.

Everything else can be made out of paper (hence “Paper Mario Party”).

3. Craft World

The first step is to make the game board and the pieces.

3.1 The Board

The board doesn’t need to follow any specific design. I originally intended to have four square “zones” with paths connecting each, but wound up with two and a weird second path between them because the paper wasn’t big enough. It works, though!

Just make sure to have have several interconnected paths, since players can move in any direction they choose.

Sprinkle the following typs of spaces throughout the board:

Type	Description
Start Space	A space for everyone to start on. There should only be one of these.
Star Space	There should be exactly six of these, each numbered according to one side of a six sided dice. At the start of a game, you roll the dice to pick which Star Space to place a Star on, and everyone tries to get to the Star to buy it. When somebody does, you roll again and put a new Star on the new Space.
Item Space	There doesn’t need to be a specific number of Item Spaces, just sprinkle some throughout the board. When a player lands on an Item Space, they draw a card from the Item Card pile and it goes into their hand for use on subsequent turn(s).
Chance Space	There doesn’t need to be a specific number of Chance Spaces, just sprinkle some throughout the board. When a player lands on a Chance Space, they draw a card from the Chance Card pile, and it takes immediate effect.
Warp Pipe	We added these after the above picture was taken when we realized that you can’t have a Mario game without warp pipes. I just put two corresponding green pipes on opposite corners of the board, and two corresponding red pipes on the other corners. When you land on one, you instantly travel to the corresponding pipe of the same color.

3.2 The Pieces

You’ll need:

Type	Description
Stars	We made these by folding a piece of yellow card stock into thirds both ways and cutting a star shape out, which yielded nine Stars.
Coins	In the same fashion as the stars, we folded a piece of paper into thirds both ways and then cut out four circles, which yielded 36 Coins.

Chance Cards

Indicated by a Mario-style [?] block, we made ten of these. They have the following varieties:

• Get 1 coin (we made three of these)
• Lose 1 coin (we made three of these)
• Get 1 star (only one of these)
• Lose 1 star (only 1 of these)
• Move 1 space from the star (only 1 of these)
• The Star moves (only 1 of these)

Item Cards

Indicated by a 🍄, we made ten of these as well. They have the following varieties:

Minigame Cards

This is where the real fun is. At the end of each round, all players compete in a minigame for a coin. They should be fun games that kids can play which don’t require a ton of equipment.

Here are some of the ones we tried:

Player Pieces

We each drew and cut out our own character to use as our piece during the game. We made Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, and Pom Pom.

4. Gameplay

Now you’re ready to play the game! It’s pretty simple.

4.1 Starting a Game

Setting up is simple:

• Each player starts with one Coin
• Roll the dice to determine which Star Space to place a Star on
• Each player puts their piece on the Start Space
• Have each player roll the dice to determine who goes first

4.2 Taking Turns

Each turn goes like this:

• First, if the player has an item card, they may choose to play it.
• Then, the player rolls the dice to determine how many spaces they will move.
• The player moves the number of spaces (you can move in any direction, but you can’t “double back”).

Here’s what happens depending on what kind of space the player stops on:

At the end of each round, draw a Minigame Card and play the minigame! The winner(s) receive 1 coin each. Make sure to record how many games each player has won, which is used when awarding Bonus Stars at the end.

4.3 Ending the Game

When any player acquires their third Star, the current round becomes the Final Round. You still finish the round (including Minigame), but Bonus Stars are awarded after and a winner is declared.

Bonus Stars

Roll the dice and award the corresponding Bonus Stars. Do this twice.

We used the following Bonus Stars. You could make up your own as well:

Remix It!

I’d like this thing to be “open source,” so if you have changes that make it more fun, or new Minigame ideas, I’d love to hear how it worked so we can incorporate them back into our game as well!

Have fun!