For this week’s critical play, I played Awkward Moment, a 3-8 player party card game published by Resonym intended for ages 12+. Awkward Moment deals players with various socially awkward situations and asks them to respond with the most applicable reactions. Similar to judging-based games like Cards Against Humanity and Apples to Apples, Awkward Moment revolved around our ability to entertain or persuade a judge with the response cards of our choice. However, unlike the open interpretability of the judges in Cards Against Humanity, Awkward Moment is constrained by the mechanics of its Decider cards, which shape the criteria for winning each round. This design choice negatively impacts the game’s social dynamics by limiting the scope of player creativity and eliminating the opportunity for fun, controversial discourse.
I argue that while Awkward Moment leverages the appeal of judging games—social interaction and humor—the Decider cards heavily restrict player creativity and controversial responses and judging, which are essential elements in these types of games. For example, when players in our group were choosing an appropriate reaction to the moment of waving to your friend but it wasn’t actually your friend, it was all of our natural instinct to put down the reaction card that we thought would be the funniest. However, the mechanics of the “Most Wholesome” Decider card during this round pivoted our genuine reactions to fit the given category of wholesome. When the judge chose the winning card, there was no discourse to be had among our group since it was obvious which card was the most wholesome, rather than an exciting competition to cater to the judge’s unique humor and interpretation. Another example is when the Moment described accidentally emailing an embarrassing text meant for a friend to a co-worker. The Decider card demanded the “Most professional” reaction, and this instruction made players chose the safer, less controversial Reaction cards, taking away from the potential for humorous or unexpected exchanges that are meant to drive engagement in judging games.
Given the relatability of Moment cards, I propose that the game would be much more enjoyable and encourage more meaningful social interaction and fellowship between players if there was no decider card constraint on how a judge must decide the winning card. Judging games are often meant to create the aesthetic of expression because each player is pushing for the ability to stand out among other players and be perceived as the most unique or funny. However, when I played this game with my group, there was frustration when players had a Reaction card that perfectly suited the Moment but didn’t meet the Decider’s criteria. As opposed to similar judging games with freer, more engaging dynamics, players of Awkward Moment aren’t able to leverage the entire range of cards and humor styles present in the deck and the people playing. Therefore, the game’s aesthetics should ideally lean towards fellowship and expression but the mechanics of the Decider cards and restriction in using reaction cards limit these types of fun by favoring conformity over creativity.
I do recognize that the game is probably best suited for middle and high school players, but I found some of the Moment cards contradictory to this intention. There were very few Moment cards that would directly cater to a mature audience, but there were still Moment cards that weren’t relatable to teenage players. For example, a Moment card that read “Somebody hacked your Facebook account and changes your status to ‘Girls are stupid’” wouldn’t have been an applicable scenario to middle and high schoolers because Facebook isn’t widely used among that age range. I would propose Moment cards that are more up to date and can be used universally among players of all ages because the limited context of certain Moment cards also discourage the natural inclination to explore controversial or creatively diverse responses if players don’t fully relate to the Moment and its context.
