Unspoken
Unspoken: a game of cards, a journey of words
A while back, I got into Where Should We Begin, a conversation game by Esther Perel. It’s designed to go beyond small talk and get people to open up. I bought a set for my brother-in-law, thinking we’d play, but since he’s in Australia, that never happened.
Later, I kept having moments with friends and family where I thought, this would be a great time for that game. But not everyone was in the same place, and scheduling a call just to play wasn’t practical. That’s how Unspoken was born – something designed for remote, async play, so you can have meaningful conversations on your own time.
Low-Pressure, Play When You Are in “The Mood”
Talk-based card games spawn a full genre. I particularly enjoy two extremes: deception games (One Night Werewolf, Spyfall) and heart-to-heart sharing games (Where should we begin). It’s not about deep therapy sessions, just good questions that spark real conversations. Perfect for catching up with old friends, connecting with family, or even just having a thoughtful moment with someone new. But talking requires “mood”, and something like “I wish I had tried harder when …” just takes a while to bubble up.
Hence Unspoken is remote play by default: just send and receive voice messages at your own pace. Messages are ephemeral (auto-delete after first listened), encouraging undivided attention to each story. First remote game I played with a friend (for real, not just debugging the app), I found recording my own voice terrifying. At the same time, listening to her voice in the middle of the night is really soothing. It’s very personal, much more so than texts.
In my imagination, Unspoken is for long-distance relationships, family across time zones, or busy friends who don’t always have a free evening to chat. I also have a U13 level that got enthusiastic thumbs up from my daughter, with cards like “Sometimes I wish my parents would …” or “My dream playground would have…”.
Questions that lead to love
I started the game with the classic 36 Questions, an academic trivia that got turned into a guide to fall in love with anyone by the NY Times. I like these questions a lot, GPT-4 generated questions just don’t come close. Even if you ask it to “mimic the style”, about two-thirds of the generated questions went out of the window for cringe, clich'e, repetition, or just … no. But a 33% hit rate is not too terrible, certainly I would do a lot worse coming up with those questions myself. My database of curated questions is now at about 150, of which about 50 are for kids (“U13”).
It would be cool if …
I have a small wish list on this game myself. Aside from the boring (anonymous logins, backend chron cleanup functions, convert .webm to .mp4 for the god-damned iPhone), some game features that I thought could be nice are
- Filter cards by topics. This would open up possibilities for niche topics, like “Programming”, with cards like “If my code had a personality, it would be…” or “Dynamic typing is…”.
- DIY questions. If we enable DIY questions, then I some kind of ranking systems to serve those questions. But then that requires some recommender system. I’m not a fan of blackbox recommender systems (by the same logic of sausage factory owners don’t eat sausages). Especially not on an emotional game like this, so this needs some careful thoughts.
If you’ve played, given feedback, or just listened to me talk about this idea – thank you! If you haven’t played yet: give it a try!
I’m always looking for game improvement ideas, bugs or otherwise. If you know me, just tell me :). If you don’t, well… I’ll make the github public soon.