Critical Play: We’re Not Really Strangers
For this week, I decided to pick up We’re Not Really Strangers, a getting to know you based card game that has gone viral time and time again. It was created by Koreen, a creative based in LA, and is meant to be played between two adults who want to know more about the other player.
Because I don’t have the game with me, I decided to recruit two of my friends and play the Truth or Truth digital pack, available for download on their website. The cards mimicked the exact look and feel of the physical card game, so I don’t think playing the digital version affected the game play all that much.
I chose this game because my game-in-progress is also a getting to know you game, but explicitly based on securing vulnerability from each player by guiding them to share secrets with one another. I wanted to see if this game had a similar theme, given that some of the cards take on a more taboo route that could be interpreted as revealing secrets. To be frank, my gameplay made me realize that there are a lot of prompts in this game that could be used for my game, which leads me to believe that my game should have an extra mechanic that separates it from this game.
I wanted to play this game to determine if the concept of levels, with level 1 demanding the least vulnerability and level 3 demanding the most, made a real difference in the quality of game play I was experiencing. This is something we want to integrate in our own game, but believe that, given that we want secrets to be based on this radical subversion of the traditionally shallow process of getting to know someone, might be counterproductive to our goal. However, in WNRS, it felt like it actually allowed for more vulnerability by the time we got to the harder questions, so I might revisit this mechanic in my own game.
One thing that I wished was different about this game was the implementation of wild cards. The wild card prompts never really felt all that wild, and so rarely caused a shift in the feeling of the game where someone was hesitant or excited to pick one up.
At a certain point, I do think the prompts reached a level of monotony where players naturally get a little fatigued about recalling memories about and reflecting on themselves. To avoid this fatigue, I think the game could have done a better job at making the prompts more diverse (i.e, telling a story about yourself vs. telling a crazy story about your teacher, or your parents, or your childhood best friend, etc…). Some of the questions are also really funny and spicy, while others demand a lot of introspection, and having those questions consecutively made the game feel a little incohesive. In fact, following a really funny question, my friend pulled a card that demanded a lot of vulnerability, and said “Sorry for bringing the vibe down…” There is definitely a time and place for a game that isn’t centered around generating fun conversation, but I’m unsure if this time and place coincides with the time and place for a game that generates fun conversation. This will definitely influence the nature of the prompts of my game going forward.
Overall, I’m glad I finally checked out WNRS, and think it provided some good insight for my future iterations of my game.
