Intimacy — A Transformational Card Game

Within a round a player draws several cards face down, flips them with a tap and picks the one they're ready to answer. The right to choose removes the feeling of interrogation and leaves the person in control.

Candour as a setting

The most delicate round, "Intimacy", isn't fixed. Before it starts the group picks a level — soft, medium or explicit — and the deck builds cumulatively for it. The whole round can be skipped with one tap. This answers the genre's main risk: one wrong card can shut a person down for the rest of the evening.

04: Online Mode Without a Server

Remote play works like play at the table. One participant creates a room and gets a six-digit code — easy to read aloud on a video call; the others enter it and join from their phones.

Technically it's peer-to-peer (WebRTC via PeerJS) with the host as the source of truth: game state lives on the room creator's device and is broadcast to everyone; players' actions come back to it. The project has no back end of its own — no accounts, no database, no one's answers on anyone else's disk. For a game about vulnerability that's part of the promise.

// multiplayerManager.ts — host: subscribe to Zustand → broadcast to all peers
function startHostSync() {
  storeUnsubscribe = useGameStore.subscribe((state, prevState) => {
    const changed = SYNC_FIELDS.some((key) => state[key] !== prevState[key]);
    if (changed && hostInstance) {
      hostInstance.broadcast({ type: 'state-update', state: getStateSyncPayload(state) });
    }
  });
}

Cards you can rewrite

A built-in deck editor lets you change, delete or add questions in any round and restore the original deck with one button. The game can be adapted to a specific group, a therapy circle or your own event.

05: Quiet Analytics of the Evening

After each round a player rates their own candour on a ten-point scale and can leave a short note. At the end everyone gets a personal chart: where it was easiest to open up, which round was hardest, the average honesty of the evening and all notes in one place.

Not gamification, not competition — scores are compared with nothing. It's a prompt for the last conversation: "why the dip on round four?"

06: Interface Details

• Animation as rhythm. Card flip, player change, timer appearance — on smooth Framer Motion curves. The interface keeps the pace of the conversation rather than pushing it.
• Sound on Web Audio. Short synthesised signals instead of audio files: zero extra weight, instant response, one button to mute.
• Timers as hints. Each round has its own answer time; the timer can be stopped if the conversation flows. It limits the pause, not the person.
• Palette. Warm pink-peach gradients, lots of air, large type — readable in a dim living room.
• PWA. Installs to the home screen and works offline — at a dacha, on a train, by a fire.
• Code entry. An intimate format instead of a public product.

// sounds.ts — card flip: a sine 800 → 400 Hz over 150 ms, not a single file
playFlip() {
  const osc = ctx.createOscillator(), gain = ctx.createGain();
  osc.connect(gain); gain.connect(ctx.destination);
  osc.frequency.setValueAtTime(800, ctx.currentTime);
  osc.frequency.exponentialRampToValueAtTime(400, ctx.currentTime + 0.15);
  gain.gain.setValueAtTime(0.15, ctx.currentTime);
  gain.gain.exponentialRampToValueAtTime(0.001, ctx.currentTime + 0.15);
  osc.start(); osc.stop(ctx.currentTime + 0.15);
}

07: Stack

Next.js 16 · React 19 · TypeScript · Tailwind CSS 4 · Framer Motion · Zustand (persisted) · PeerJS / WebRTC · Recharts · Web Audio API · Service Worker (PWA)

08: Outcome

A finished product that runs from a phone with no install, needs no server and stores none of the players' answers. 200+ original questions, six rounds, three mechanics, three depth levels, offline and online modes, a deck editor and personal stats — plus a separate landing that explains it all in one scroll.

The main discovery: in games about closeness, design works by subtraction. The final card screen is a question, a timer and one button.