Help us write the deck
A brief for playtest couples. Read time: about five minutes.
What we’re building
An app for playing truth or dare — but one that actually knows where everyone’s limits are before the first card comes up.
Here’s the idea. Before you play, each person goes through a set of questions on their own phone, privately, marking things Yes, No, or Curious. Then the game only ever serves cards that everyone playing said yes to. Nobody has to announce a limit out loud. Nobody has to guess. And nobody ever finds out what anyone else said no to — not even your own partner.
The bit we’re most proud of: if two people independently marked the same thing Curious, the app tells them. That’s a conversation most couples never quite manage to start.
It’s for playing in the same room, on one shared phone. It is not a dating app. There’s no matching, no profiles, no messages, no accounts. Your answers never leave your own device.
What we need from you
Cards. Good ones. That’s the whole product and it’s the part we can’t fake.
We can write the engine. We cannot write 300 cards that feel right to people who actually do this, and cards written from the outside are obvious within about four cards. So we’re asking the people who’d actually play it.
Concretely: as many or as few as you feel like writing, tagged so we know where they belong. There’s no quota and no deadline — five great cards is worth more than fifty filler ones.
And, honestly: the boring end of the deck. More on this below, because it’s the part everyone skips and it’s the part that decides whether the app works.
Your privacy in this
Worth being direct about, since we’re asking you to write intimate things down.
- Submit under a pseudonym. Pick anything. We don’t need your real name and we’d rather not have it attached to card submissions.
- We’re not asking you to tell us your own limits. This is about writing cards, not filling in a profile.
- Submissions go to one private repository. They aren’t published as attributed to anyone, ever.
- If you want a card pulled after submitting, say the word and it’s gone.
One legal line, because we’re going to sell this
Some cards will end up in paid decks. So: by submitting a card you’re granting us the right to use, edit and sell it. No royalties, no ongoing claim — a plain grant.
We’d rather say that plainly up front than have it be awkward later. If that’s not something you’re comfortable with, that’s completely fine, and playtesting the app is still enormously useful on its own.
The two things that make a card
This is the part worth reading carefully, because it’s where we need your judgement and it’s what makes this app different from the free ones.
1. How far does it go? — the tier
| Tier | What it covers |
|---|---|
| 0 | Talk only. Icebreakers. Nothing physical, nothing revealing. |
| 1 | Flirting. Compliments, teasing, eye contact. Clothed, no touching. |
| 2 | Light contact. Hands, dancing, sitting close. Fully clothed. |
| 3 | Kissing. |
| 4 | Undressing, partial nudity. |
| 5 | Soft swap — contact with someone else's partner, nothing penetrative. |
| 6 | Full swap. |
| 7 | Everyone at once. |
2. Who’s it with? — the configuration
| Tag | Meaning |
|---|---|
solo | About you, or performed alone |
own_partner | With the person you came with |
cross | With a partner from the other couple, opposite sex |
cross_same_sex | With a partner from the other couple, same sex |
group | Everyone involved |
audience | Watching, or being watched. No contact. |
These are separate on purpose. "Full swap yes, same-sex no" is a completely normal position and a single slider can't express it. Neither can it express someone who's happy watching anything and doesn't want to be touched.
Why we’re this fussy about it: our first prototype used a flat mild/medium/spicy scale. "Kiss them on the cheek" and an explicit sex act both ended up tagged spicy. Someone agreeing to "spicy" expecting the first one would have been handed the second. That’s the exact thing this app exists to prevent, and we’d built it by accident. Hence the two axes.
Also tag
- Type —
truth(a question),dare(an action),curiosity(a soft invitation, easy to decline),checkin(a pause, a temperature check). - Theme, one or more —
confession·fantasy·voyeur·touch·kink_light·verbal·roleplay·aftercare - Needs privacy? — yes if it couldn't happen on a club floor or in a living room with the curtains open.
The part everyone skips
Tiers 0 to 2 matter more than tiers 5 to 7.
We know how that sounds. Here’s the reasoning.
You’re experienced. To you, tier 0–2 cards are throat-clearing before the real thing, and your instinct will be to skim past them and write the good stuff.
But most people who download this app will be curious and fairly new — they’ve talked about it, maybe done it once or twice. Tier 0–2 is their entire first session. If those cards are boring, they close the app and never see tier 5. Everything you write at the top of the ladder gets seen by nobody.
So we need both, and we need you to take the low tiers as seriously as the high ones. If you know a couple who’s curious but hasn’t done much — they’d be especially useful to us, and they’d be judging exactly the cards you’re least well placed to judge.
How to write one
Six rules. They’re short because they matter.
- Direct, not clinical. No euphemisms, no anatomy-textbook register. Say the thing.
- Never coercive. Every dare implies an out. "If you want to" costs four words and changes the whole feel of a deck.
- Don’t assume who’s playing. Write "someone" and "a partner", not "the wife". The same card should work for any combination of people.
- Second person, present tense, one sentence. If it needs two sentences, tell us — we’ll tag it as a longer card.
- Funny is allowed and badly underused. Most decks in this category are either sterile or crude. Wit is the gap.
- Check-in cards must not deflate the room. "Everyone still comfortable?" is awful. Make it warm and in-voice.
Some tier 0–2 cards, so you can hear the register
T0 · truth · solo
What’s something you’ve done that you’d never have predicted five years ago?
T0 · checkin · group
Everyone name one thing you’re actually in the mood for tonight. Vague answers allowed.
T1 · dare · group
Give the most sincere compliment you can to the person on your left. No jokes, no hedging.
T1 · curiosity · solo
Name something you’re curious about but have never said out loud.
T2 · dare · own_partner
Sixty seconds of hand-holding. Nothing else. Try not to laugh.
T2 · dare · cross
Slow dance with someone you didn’t arrive with, one song.
T2 · truth · audience
Is it easier for you to watch, or to be watched? Answer honestly.
Same discipline applies all the way up: one sentence, no assumed configuration, always an out.
Getting the build
It is not on any store, and it is not public. If you are playtesting with us you were sent a code — put it in here and you can install the current build. Android for now; iOS needs a different route and is not ready.
You do not need the app to help. The card form below takes submissions from anyone, and the cards are the part we most need.
Sending them in
The form is best for a card or two at a time and works on your phone. If you get on a roll, ask for the spreadsheet instead — same columns, same pipeline.
And if you play a session and something feels off — the pacing, a card that landed badly, a tier that felt mislabelled — that feedback is worth as much as the cards. Tell us.
Thank you. Genuinely — this is the half of the project we can’t do alone.