I played “Evil Apples”, a mobile game created by Evil Studios Limited. The game uses similar fill-in-the-blank mechanics to Cards Against Humanity. (My team’s is also creating a fill-in-the-blank-style game.) However, unlike Cards Against Humanity, its difficult to tell who the intended audience is, making it lose the strong sense of fellowship that other games in this genre usually foster.
Like other fill-in-the-blank games (Cards Against Humanity, Apples to Apples), there is a judge and a dedicated set of cards. Evil Apples differs in its several modes—most notably survival mode, where the sole objective for a player is to play all of their cards. This mechanic adds a level of challenge to the fun, which I and the others that I played with enjoyed.
However, where Evil Apples fails is when creating fellowship, its intended type of fun. In other fill-in-the-blank games, fellowship is created through the out-of-pocket jokes and connections made between cards. Much of this is due to the wit and timeliness of the cards, especially when catered to a specific group (CAH loves using expansion packs to appeal to different groups of people). In Evil Apple, the cards reference things that are simply bad, “gross”, or just crass (nazis, poop, or just an adjective followed by “boner”). Although with CAH and Apples to Apples, the game does often eventually turn into “who can put the worst or most shocking card down”, the path to this point in the game is what breaks the ice and builds fellowship.
Like CAH, Evil Apples is marketed as an “adult” game (due to the sexual nature of a lot of the response cards). However, what Evil Studios Limited fails to realize is that in addition to sex, adults can discuss other (more complex) topics and themes, such as politics, ethics, and irony. This isn’t to say that CAH is necessarily an intellectual game, but a lot of its “shock” factor comes from understanding the context surrounding the card connection. Being able to bond over this connection is also what lends itself to the fellowship type of fun. The only fellowship built in Evil Apples is bonding over how awful everyone’s cards are.
Aside from its sexual content, there is nothing about Evil Apple that is “mature”. The jokes on the cards are reminiscent of middle school jokes. Even the aesthetics and design is childish—the cards are bright purple and everyone is represented by a cute little cartoon devil character. (Compare this with the simple black and white cards in CAH.)
If I could improve Evil Apples, I would go full send with the “mature” and “evil” concepts. I would start by making the design fit the target audience—I would discard the chibi devil characters and make the design sleeker. With these changes, Evil Apples could easily become a CAH clone, so I would make survival mode the only mode of the game and give each card a theme. (They seem to really enjoy the devil theme, so maybe each card prompt could begin with a phrase including the devil, similar to “Never Have I Ever”). This way, the core aesthetic and dynamics of the game remains, but the mechanics and content are adjusted to better fit the target audience and build fellowship between those within it.
