Bunker: Ark

A catastrophe has happened. You are standing at the entrance to a bunker, and there are fewer places inside than there are of you. Everyone plays a character with a profession, health, baggage, a phobia and seven more lines that nobody sees except whoever holds the phone. Each round you reveal a card aloud and argue that you belong inside. Then everyone votes at once on who to throw out. The game runs until exactly as many people are left as there are places. ONE CODE FOR EVERYONE The host creates a game and reads out an eight-character code. Everyone else types it in, and the same game assembles for all of them: the same catastrophe, the same bunker, the same characters at the same seat numbers. No internet at all. No sign-up, no rooms, no server that can go down halfway through. The game is derived from the code by arithmetic that is identical on any phone — so your game cannot drift apart between an iPhone and an Android. WHAT IS INSIDE • 4 to 19 players, no host role required • 1312 cards free: professions, health, baggage, phobias, action cards • Five content sets, 2500 cards in total. Classic is free forever; the rest are switched on before a game and travel inside the code, so the whole table has the same ones • English and Russian • A catastrophe and a bunker with floor area, self-sufficiency, supplies and a fault — there is something to argue about besides each other • Threats: something happens in the bunker every round, which gives the table a shared problem again • A secret room, opened on the third round; until then all you know is that it exists • Round counter and a speech timer, so a game does not sprawl • Seat keys: the host hands out seats in person, and nobody can open somebody else's character • Reveals are marked by tapping — there is nothing to type • A SURVIVAL STORY at the end: the app tells you how this group lived out its term, and breaks down what saved them and what doomed them • A history of games played, and a shareable image of the outcome WHAT WE LEFT OUT The app does not count votes and does not police turn order. You vote aloud and simultaneously — livelier than tapping a phone one at a time. It could not know what happens at the table anyway: there is no network. Pretending to know is worse than honestly not knowing.