Happy Chan is a very amusing game to play that a friend and I invented in Junior High, and now... ten years later, we still occasionally dig out the pad and paper every now and then. It survives in various forms now, and has recently seen an upsurge in popularity in the
Dallas/
Fort Worth area of Texas as we have introduced it at
parties and
IHOP. You don't need to be particularly artistic to play this game. In fact, the worse your drawing skills, the more fun it tends to be.
Number of Players: 2-X (as many as you want, but odd numbers are better)
Materials Needed: A sheet of paper, a pen.
Objective: The objective is quite simple. Keep Happy Chan...well...happy. Get him out of a dangerous situation, or if you are the
bad guy then you are trying to get Happy Chan killed.
Rules:
- First player draws Happy Chan, Generally represented by a smily face wearing a kimono and a Saipan Coolie hat (rice-paddy hat), with a big smile, and a couple of lumps that might be called hands and feet. Happy Chan should take up no more than a small portion of the page, and should be placed in the middle.
- First player puts him in a nice peaceful situation, such as wishing to cross a bridge, or pick a flower, or something, drawing it out.
- Second player then takes the pen and paper and draws a threatening situation, such as a crocodile leaping out of the river at Chan, or a nuclear missile aimed at him, then passes the paper on to the next player.
- The next player then proceeds to turn the threat into some non-threatening thing, such as turning the crocodile into a tree, or the nuclear missile into the Goodyear blimp, then passes the paper on to the next player, who then draws a threat, then passes it on, etc...
- No threat may be repeated twice.
- No solution may be repeated twice.
- You cannot erase, use white-out, tear the paper, or otherwise physically remove a threat. You can only change the drawing with more ink/pencil to make it a threat no longer.
- Happy Chan cannot have everything-proof shields.
- Game ends when you run out of space to draw or are laughing too much to draw.