Charades is a classic party game that relies on the performance of recognizable actions, titles, or phrases without speaking while others guess what’s being mimed. It was created in France in the 18th century with a guide published by The Brothers Mayhew. The target audience is broad, including all ages capable of understanding and acting out something, families, and individuals, and it is a social game that does not require any specific materials besides a way to communicate the secret phrase to the actor. Our game, Scene & Unseen, draws inspiration from Charades in terms of performance-based play and guesswork, but focuses less on accurate communication and more on emergent narrative, emotional ambiguity, and collective improvisation.
While Charades is fundamentally a game about guessing a pre-determined answer, our game shifts the goal from guessing correctly to creating a shared performance. In Charades, success is binary—you either guess the answer or you don’t. Our game replaces the binary win/loss mechanic with more open-ended storytelling prompts and surreal actions (“gives a monologue to a spoon,” “accidentally joins a cult mid-scene,” “laughs at the wrong time”), allowing players to interpret and respond to the moment. The result is a game experience more akin to collective improvisational theater than traditional competitive gameplay. For example, one of the participants in our playtest got the prompt “gives a monologue to a spoon” and acted out a dramatic monologue, saying “You were there when no one else was. When they laughed—when they said it was just soup—you listened. You always listened.” Everyone bursted into laughter after this, showing the fun that is created from the improv nature of our game that would not be present in Charades.
One clever mechanic in Charades is its constraint: players must not speak or mouth words, forcing them to communicate using gesture, expression, and body language. This constraint fosters creativity under pressure. However, it can also limit the kinds of narratives that emerge, often defaulting to familiar tropes (movies, books, simple actions). Our game borrows this constraint but uses it to deepen ambiguity rather than reduce it. For instance, a prompt like “smiles too widely for the moment” invites not a clear answer but a mood. This opens a door to a different kind of play: instead of decoding a mime, players become co-authors of a surreal narrative.
Compared to other performance-based games like Codenames, Monikers, or even Werewolf (which mixes performance with social deduction), our game is differentiated by its total commitment to ambiguity and emergent story.
Using the MDA framework, Charades delivers the aesthetic of “Challenge” (guessing correctly) and “Fellowship” (cooperation within a team). Our game emphasizes “Expression” and “Fantasy.” The mechanics (drawing and performing absurd prompts) feed into dynamics that encourage character-building and narrative collaboration. From a formal elements standpoint, both games involve roles (actor vs. audience), actions (performing, guessing, reacting), and time (a limited turn or scene). However, while Charades focuses on clarity of communication, our game thrives in confusion, emotional layering, and emergent meaning.
