Intrusive Thoughts
Charades was always too tame for the humour of the group that actually plays it. Intrusive Thoughts keeps the format but swaps the content: draw a card from the Confessions deck for the thought, one from the Twist deck for how you have to perform it, and the mismatch between the two is the joke.
Charades was a staple growing up, but every safe, family-friendly prompt felt too tame for the humour a lot of people actually have. TikTok has normalised cringey, uncomfortable humour for 18–25 year-olds, and that's just how the joke lands now.
Intrusive thoughts are perfect material: everyone has them, and saying one out loud turns private discomfort into shared laughter. Prompt games like Cards Against Humanity own dark humour but have no performance; charades-style games own performance but stay deliberately safe. Nothing does both.
Two decks. The Confessions deck holds the unhinged intrusive thought; the Twist deck dictates how it has to be performed: sung, mimed, whispered, delivered as a TED talk. Draw one from each and act out the mismatch while the group guesses. The structure leaves room for expansion packs, turning a single game into a product line.
Late-teens and early university icebreakers (18–20), mid-to-late university friend groups confident enough for genuinely edgy humour (21–23), and recent graduates who buy it as a gift for smaller gatherings (24–25).
- Round 1 paired a single card deck with a spinner for delivery style; it proved the concept but the spinner was repetitive and fragile.
- Round 2 replaced the spinner with a second deck (Confessions + Twist), fixing the pacing and making the system extensible.
- Identity leans black and dark red: black for the mind and subconscious, red for stress and discomfort, dramatic enough to stay fun, not actually dark.
- Packaging evolved into a minimal matchbox-style slide box tied together by the "IT." wordmark and a scribble motif.
Retiring the spinner was the single decision that moved the project furthest: it unified the system and made the game replayable. The real tension: staying dark enough to be funny without crossing into actually harmful territory, which took tested writing rather than a rulebook.
