Game Name: Bad Choices
Game’s Creator: Mike Lancaster (published by Mike’s company, Dyce Games)
Platform: Physical tabletop
Target Audience: Individuals (preferably friends who know well) aged 17+ who enjoy party games, humor, and are comfortable answering bold, personal questions
Bad Choices is a party game which can be described as a combination of Never Have I Ever and UNO. Each player receives a set of six cards with edgy, personal “Never Have I Ever” or “Would You Rather” style questions. On their turn, they pick a card and ask another player a question they think that person will answer “yes” to. If the player answers “yes,” the card is discarded. Otherwise, the card stays in the asker’s hand. The first player to get rid of all their cards wins. There are also “draw” and “skip” cards that add slight variation to the flow. The game’s core mechanic revolves around social deduction, and its aesthetics lean into humor, shock, and bold personal storytelling.
I chose this game because I enjoyed the element of predicting how someone would respond. That mechanic makes the game especially fun with close friends, as it rewards having a strong sense of each other’s personalities. When I played, one of the funniest questions was, “Would you date someone who ticks all the boxes but has bad breath that they couldn’t fix?” My friend immediately and confidently said yes, which made all of us laugh and sparked a full conversation. Everyone ended up sharing their takes, and that moment really highlighted what makes the game work both the social dynamic and the competition.
This reminded me of our team’s game for P1, Who’s My Queen?, which is also built around social understanding. In our game, players take on roles as King, Queen and Commoners, and try to guess how the Queen would respond to a prompt. Commoners work together to create convincing fake answers, and the King tries to choose the Queen’s actual answer. The game thrives when players know each other’s humor and thought processes, just like Bad Choices. While Bad Choices is more about one on one prediction/guessing, Who’s My Queen? introduces role asymmetry and an collaborative atmosphere thereby adding more complexity to the dynamics.
One challenge both games face is how they play out when the group doesn’t know each other well. In Bad Choices, it can take time for players to warm up, especially if the questions are too personal for a group of strangers. At first, players might rely on stereotypes or first impressions. Still, that can be a conversation starter. Similarly, in early playtests of Who’s My Queen?, players had a harder time coming up with strong answers because they didn’t know how the Queen might think. But as rounds went on, we heard things like, “I wouldn’t have guessed that from you,” or “How did I miss that?” These moments show how both games build insight derived from social interactions over time. The dynamic becomes more enjoyable as players grow more comfortable and learn each other’s humor and thought processes.
A key difference between the games is collaboration. Bad Choices is structured around individual decision making. Players are focused on their own cards and trying to read others for your own advantage. While the mechanics don’t require teamwork, the group often reacts together with laughter or commentary, making it feel interactive. In Who’s My Queen?, collaboration is essential. Commoners have to think strategically and align their responses to confuse the King. This creates a different kind of engagement – more back and forth conversations, strategy and collaborative effort in reaching the outcome.
That said, I did run into some design limitations while playing Bad Choices. The biggest one was stagnation. If you get stuck with cards that don’t apply to anyone in the group, you’re stuck holding them. Even if you try asking the same question again later, the surprise is gone. The rules discourage repeating cards, which can be frustrating and make the game feel repetitive. I remember someone saying, “Not this one again,” which shows how easy it is for the pacing to slow down. A possible solution would be to allow card swaps, or a mechanic where players can discard and draw a new card if a question does not pan well. In contrast, Who’s My Queen? avoids this issue by using built in variation. We rotate the roles every three rounds, introduce new prompts, and keep the gameplay changing so no one gets stuck in the same position or flow for too long.
Image 1: Some cards from one of my initial rounds – I thought there were some interesting prompts and the Draw +2 card was a great bonus.
Image 2: In this stage of one of the rounds – I was starting to feel stuck/bored because I felt like none of the prompts resonated with any of the players.
From a formal elements perspective, Bad Choices uses the simple mechanics of ask, answer, discard, but the success of those mechanics depends heavily on the dynamics between players. Its aesthetic relies on humor, surprise, and sometimes a bit of discomfort which works best in groups that are already close. That brings up ethical considerations. Not all players may be equally comfortable answering personal questions, especially in mixed social settings. While the game doesn’t force an answer, there can be pressure to go along with the group’s tone. In designing Who’s My Queen?, we’ve tried to account for this by offering a range of prompts and making sure roles rotate, so everyone has different ways to participate without always being in the spotlight. It’s important that social games like these are designed with inclusivity in mind such that no one feels excluded or overwhelmed by the format.
Taking a step back, Bad Choices is a fast, fun game that works well with the right group. It creates memorable moments through personal questions, quick thinking, and strong reactions. Comparing it to Who’s My Queen? helped me think more deeply about the role of player familiarity, social knowledge, and structure in shaping a game’s success. Both games rely on knowing how others think, but they offer different paths to that understanding – one through direct guessing, the other through layered collaboration. Each shows the power of designing around social interactions and the importance of creating mechanics that support both engagement and inclusion.
