By Elliott, Lour, Winnie, and Yanny
Artist Statement
Scene & Unseen is a social storytelling game that asks each player to embody a single element of a larger narrative. We designed the game for five or more players per round, and leverage performance, collaborative improvisation, and mystery to create moments of spontaneous social play. Four players (the “Actors”) receive a shared scene card containing a WHO, WHAT, WHERE, and WHY, but each player only performs one of these elements. All other players (the “Guessers”) observe the scene and must reconstruct what they think happened.
Our goal was to create a game that encourages expressive physical and verbal storytelling and creates laughter through ambiguity and creativity. We were especially interested in the intrigue and creativity created when players know the full context but can only hint at a small part, forcing others to lean into timing, tone, and creative performance. Inspired by games like Charades and Spyfall, we wanted to experiment with structured absurdity and narrative misalignment to generate fun.
The game was designed with accessibility and replayability in mind—no prior acting experience is required, and each scene is short, making it easy to drop in and out. The guessing mechanic offers a natural arc to each round, and the open-ended nature of the scenes leaves room for inside jokes and group dynamics to evolve.
Concept Map
Initial Decision
From the beginning, we designed Scene & Unseen around the idea of “collaborative chaos,” seeking to create a game that thrives on social interpretation, improvised performance, and the not always clear connection between what someone intends to communicate and what others perceive. We weren’t interested in traditional point-based systems or competition. Instead, we wanted to create a game that was fun specifically because of the group dynamic it required, a kind of ensemble-driven storytelling that leans into awkwardness, surprise, and the joy of watching meaning fall apart and reassemble in real time.
In our earliest vision, players took on distinct roles: one player acted out a scenario while three others acted as “scene builders,” interpreting the performance and attempting to reconstruct the rest of the story. The mechanics at that point included action cards to guide the performance and mood cards to shape its tone. As the design evolved, these roles shifted toward a shared performance structure, and we replaced those early cards with full scene cards that presented four elements: a Who, What, Where, and Why, to be performed collectively.
We grounded the game in mechanics that allowed only one line of dialogue per player and prohibited actors from explicitly naming their assigned scene element. We implemented these constraints with the intention of generating unexpected dynamics, misunderstandings, and humor. Our aesthetics at this stage were interpretive tension, performative absurdity, and spontaneous narrative creation. We wanted players to feel like they were not just playing a game but participating in a piece of surrealist theater.
Inclusivity is core to the game’s values: every player should feel safe being silly. That’s why we prioritized creativity, nonverbal communication, and low-stakes expression over rule mastery and performance skills. We wanted a game that was fast to teach, inviting to newcomers, and infinitely replayable. This commitment led us to prioritize design principles like ease of onboarding, replay potential, and support for both chaotic and collaborative player behavior. Whether you’re shy or dramatic, literal or lateral-thinking, Scene & Unseen invites you to step into the spotlight — and then immediately trip over it, together.
Iterations
First Playtest
Our initial version of Scene & Unseen was directly inspired by the card-based party game Awkward Moment, which challenges players to react to socially uncomfortable scenarios with unexpected responses. We wanted to preserve that blend of absurdity and relatability, but introduce performance into the equation. In our first design, one player was the Actor, receiving both an Action card and a Mood card (e.g. “tripping on stage” while feeling “deeply proud”), and performing a short scene. The remaining three players were Scene Builders, tasked with watching the performance and independently writing down their interpretation of the scene by filling in the Who, Where, and Why. We thought this structure would strike a balance between performance and interpretation, with everyone contributing creatively.
However, during our first playtest with four classmates, it quickly became clear that the Scene Builder role lacked clarity and energy.
- Players were unsure of when and how to contribute, and their role felt passive compared to the Actor’s spotlight.
- The Mood card also introduced unnecessary complexity and didn’t always have a meaningful influence on performance.
- The game had potential, but the asymmetry in player experience held it back.
Second Playtest
For the second playtest, we revised the rule structure to give both Actor and Builders more defined constraints. The Actor was now only allowed to speak one line — not something that described their scene directly, but a sentence that made emotional or narrative sense in performance. Scene Builders still worked independently, but we explicitly stated that they could not speak or collaborate during the round. We tested the second iteration with five players, including two who were not familiar with party games, to see how intuitive the onboarding process felt. The performance rule worked much better: scenes became shorter, snappier, and more interpretable.
However, we once again received the same feedback — the Actor had all the fun. The Builders wanted in. Several players admitted they were “jealous” of the acting role and wanted the opportunity to perform too. They would even playfully compete over who got to be the Actor next. This confirmed what we had begun to suspect: the core pleasure of the game wasn’t in decoding the story — it was in embodying it.
Final Playtest
For our final playtest, we completely restructured the format to embrace ensemble performance.
- Instead of one Actor and three Scene Builders, the scene now included four Actors, each assigned one narrative element — Who, What, Where, or Why — from a pre-written Scene card.
- All four Actors saw the full card and knew the entire scene, but only performed their assigned part, in order. Meanwhile, a fifth player (and/or other players who are not actors), the Guesser, watched the scene unfold with no prior context and attempted to deduce the original story.
- We eliminated the Mood card entirely, since it no longer played a meaningful role in the structure.
- We created five categories of prompts including Stanford, Meme, Celebrity, Daily and Cyberpunk.
We tested this version with seven players, with roles rotating across several rounds. It produced the strongest response by far. Players laughed, improvised, misread cues, and leaned into their roles. More importantly, everyone was involved; no one felt sidelined. At the end of the game, they even exclaimed, “We want to play again, we want to play again!” The social energy we had originally admired in Awkward Moment came through, but in our own voice: chaotic, theatrical, and collectively built in the moment.
Afterwards
After that final playtest, we received one last piece of critical feedback — while the acting and guessing were engaging, some players found the formatting of the prompt on the scene card confusing or difficult to parse quickly. In response, we made one final revision to polish the game’s presentation. We implemented a consistent color scheme across the box cover and cards for visual cohesion, and redesigned the prompt layout to improve readability.
Each element — Who, What, Where, and Why — is now clearly labeled with a heading in a bold, contrasting color and underscored to distinguish it from the body text. This segmentation ensures that all players can easily identify their role at a glance and helps the card feel more structured and approachable during fast-paced play. Furthermore, in response to comments about how some things were significantly more difficult to act out than others, we’ve implemented a difficulty indicator on the back of each card. Though small, this final visual pass made onboarding smoother and helped the tone of the cards match the personality of the game itself.
Ultimately, the process taught us that shared performance, not judgment or deduction, was the emotional center of our game. We let go of our original structure, not because it was broken, but because our playtesters showed us something better: a game where misunderstanding is the feature, not the flaw, and where everyone has a role to play in the spectacle of the unseen.
