Duet: The Ultimate Pair Share Game

Designed and Created By Pau Anzaldo, Sophia Dew, Shreya Venkat, and Austin Zambito-Valente

Banner for Duet

Warning: this game contains an extreme amount of fun! Play at your own risk.

Artist Statement

Let’s be honest, ice breakers are awkward! Our team designed Duet to spark laughter, work with one another, and ultimately, break the ice. Duet builds off of the “think, pair, share” classroom learning tool, but with a creative-improvised twist. Each round, players are randomly paired up to act out a given prompt in a mini-improv “duet.” Players try to be as funny and crazy as possible to spark laughs in the audience. After a round, each player votes on the funniest duet.

This game leverages improvisation techniques to slightly push you out of your comfort zone and create a social-emotional interaction with your duet partner. What was once an awkward interaction with a stranger has become a communal improv show with newfound buddies!

Concept Map

In developing Duet, we had one goal in mind — build relationships through laughter. However, when creating the game, we faced a big dilemma. It is incredibly difficult to make people laugh through zoom. Other games that inspired us like Cards Against Humanity and Who Can Do It relly on being physically in-person to spark laughter. Additionally, sitting physically in a circle creates a clear understanding of who the next player should be.

We designed our game to create fellowship through pairing and improv because these techniques make players more comfortable with the uncomfortable. Below is our concept map that outlines the formal elements of our game.

However, our formal elements did not always look like this — it took several iterations to create Duet.

Initial Decisions

In developing Duet, we began with an intense brainstorming session using a technique called crazy eights. We each sketched ideas for fellowship games creating a total of 32 game ideas in the span of a few minutes!

These games were our foundation to build on top of each other’s ideas and combine game mechanics. We then summarized our top ideas and expended their formal elements, noticing what the intentions of each game would be. By the end of this session, we drafted the first version of Make Me Laugh — a game that focuses on one person at a time and tries to make them laugh.

Within our first playtest, we quickly realized that while the intentions of the game were compelling, the idea of making someone laugh in a virtual call was difficult and ambiguous.

Our first playtesters pointed out that it was awkward to spotlight players individually if they have never met each other. Thus, we pivoted to a more collaborative version of make me laugh, by pairing up players randomly in each round and giving them “prompts” to do. Since each pair has to do the same prompt, we wipe away the shyness in doing activities alone and give an opportunity to work with someone you might not otherwise pair up with.

Testing and Iteration History

Playtest #1: Each player acts out the prompt alone

• Overall, players like the idea of laughter, but it was really awkward to initiate.
• There was a lot of confusion on whose turn it was and who should go next. This made it so that the moderator was constantly notifying which player should go, disrupting the natural flow of the game.
• Players did not like to do these silly prompts alone and wanted a partner to work with.

Playtest #2: First playtest with pairs

• This was much more successful than the first playtest — players were much more willing to participate with partners
• The creativity in the prompts helped the players get comfortable very quickly
• There was still confusion on how long each duet should take. Some players ended up taking a whole 5 minutes, while others only spoke for a few seconds.
• The game still did not flow well — from picking the teams, to each team acting out their prompt, to voting.
• Realized that funny prompts had tons of success, and not as funny prompts ruin the fun of the game.
• Players felt that it was unfair if their team had to go first since subsequent teams had an advantage.

Playtest #3: First playtest with new pair structure

• This playtest used zoom to vote instead of PollEv, which made voting much easier for the players. However, we still found that adding a question randomizer as well as the PollEv created too much technology that caused confusion.
• We found that it was confusing voting for teams because we referred to the first team as Team A, B, C, etc. Instead, we decided to name them Team 1, 2, 3, etc. to match the order that they presented.
• We used a prompt that was a bit awkward and realized the importance that our prompts had in ensuring that the game was fun.

Playtest #4: Second playtest with new pair structure

• Players loved the prompts we used and thought they were super funny and unique.
• Players were competitive and put a huge effort into their “duet” sharing. We even noticed shy players coming out of their shells.
• The “best” team was very subjective and players wanted clear criteria for what they should vote for.
• Players who weren’t speaking muted themselves and expressed that they wish everyone had their mics on so they could hear everyone’s laughter.
• The moderator didn’t share their screen so players needed to be reminded of the prompts.

Playtest #5: Final Playtest

• We took all of the feedback we got from playtests 1–4 and had a super successful round in our 5th playtest!
• Players loved that we got to be with new partners in each new round
• The moderator shared the python script that made it super easy to moderate.
• The entire game flowed extremely smoothly — from explaining the rules to creating teams, to voting
• Players quickly understood the rules of the game and felt motivated to win points each round

App Icon Mockups

First Iteration

Second Iteration

Final Links to Game and Playtest

Please find a link to our game here — watch the video to learn how to play, and run the python script, duet.py, to play the game!

Conclusion

In creating this game, our team went through an entire cycle of designing — from initially brainstorming ideas using the crazy eight’s format to doing multiple playtests on our game and continuously iterating to achieve our finalized version. We had so much fun playtesting with different groups of people and fleshing out the rules of our game to give players the best experience. Overall, we’re thrilled with how Duet turned out, and we can’t wait for you to play it!