That Old Wallpaper A Card Game of Piecing Things Together!

Rummage through layers of nostalgic home memories, draft retro wallpaper scraps from shared rooms, and piece together matching shapes and colors in an elegant card-drafting puzzle.

That Old Wallpaper: A Card Game of Piecing Things Together! (designed by Shanon Lyon and Marisa Pena, published by Alderac Entertainment Group / AEG) turns mid-century home renovation and sensory memory recall into a tactile spatial puzzle. Players travel back in time to restore the faded, textured walls of an old family house by collecting patterned strips of vintage wallpaper. The primary gameplay objective centers on simultaneous card selection and spatial pattern completion: across three distinct rounds, players draft wallpaper strips to form an expanding personal tableau, trying to align matching halves of geometric shapes across four colors to score massive end-game multipliers.

The primary mechanical hurdle stems from balancing competitive room bidding against the threat of drafting conflicts, paired with a punishing multiplication scoring formula. Each turn, players simultaneously play a numbered bidding card (1–10) to draft wallpaper from available table locations. If you are the sole player choosing a particular location, you claim all the regular wallpaper cards stacked there and immediately integrate them into your wall. However, if two or more players bid on the same room, a drafting clash occurs—instead of claiming the prized wallpaper strips, conflicting players are forced to take "Blurry Memory" cards, which feature patterns along only one edge. When regular wallpaper cards are added to your tableau, you must align adjacent edges to form complete symbols. Patterns come in four distinct colors, each featuring Large and Small symbols. At the end of the game, Blurry Memory cards can patch unfinished edges, but each color's final score is calculated by multiplying your total number of completed Large symbols by your Small symbols (e.g., 4 Large × 3 Small = 12 points). Neglecting either size completely reduces that color's payout to zero. Designed for 2 to 5 players aged 10 and up, a complete renovation runs in an easygoing 15 to 30 minutes. To walk away with the most harmonious home, you must out-anticipate your rivals' bids, steer clear of shared rooms, and piece together a balanced, seamless tapestry of patterns.

Game Specs at a Glance:
Age Range: 10+ Years
Publisher: AEG
Play Time: 15-30 Minutes
Player Count: 2-5 Players
Complexity: Light (Simultaneous Selection, Card Drafting, Spatial Pattern Building, Tile/Card Placement, Multiplicative Scoring)

What's in the Box?

• 80 Wallpaper Cards
• 50 Player Bidding Cards
• 24 Blurry Memory Cards
• 5 Location / Room Dividers
• 1 Round Tracker and Marker
• 1 Scorepad
• 1 Rulebook