I worked on a tabletop game during an Interaction Design course this semester. It’s about how we keep and reveal secrets. There was an actual exhibition we were going to apply for: Secrecy at The Science Gallery in Dublin. My game was not selected for the exhibition, but it came pretty far in the evaluation it seemed, so that’s fun.
The first design for the game cards:
The second design for the game cards + z-folder explaining the game and rules:
I got to test the game on some friends. It gave me a better idea of what to be worked on if I am to develop the game further.
Spill the Beans is a card game dealing with psychological and social aspects of secrecy. To win, the players must get 10 beans by keeping their own secrets while trying to reveal other players secrets. The game starts by picking a Secret-card, which provides an instruction to all the players on what kind of secret each player will write down. Using their own secrets increases their emotional involvement. Action-cards, kept on each players hand, are used for playing out the game. The five types of action-cards reflect how we keep and reveal secrets. For example the Pressure-cards, which are placed on other players to make them “spill the beans”, may for example reflect situations of peer pressure or psychological pressure. With enough pressure cards, a player must reveal his secret and give a bean to the last person who pressured him. How the players choose to play these cards point, in a playful manner, towards psychological and social mechanisms at work in the interaction.
Lisbeth Moen 