Elephant in the Relationship was designed in collaboration with Andy Uehara, Michael Annetta, and Casey China. Exhibited at Game Show NYC.
Elephant in the Relationship is a game for 2 to 4 players in which players try to communicate deeply troubling relationship issues. Players take on the roles of two people in a personal relationship and turn the drama of a potentially risky (or intimate) interaction into spectacle for a group to enjoy. The game fuses Pictionary-style drawing and guessing mechanics with elements of doll-play and improvisational theater, asking players to place themselves into a difficult emotional scenario with their partner. The game includes a whiteboard arena, dry-erase markers, post-its, and colored playing pieces (designed to “stand-in” for the players). Using only these tools, a player tries to get their partner to guess the unspeakable relationship issue. By inserting players directly into the representational world of the drawing space, the game encourages empathy, divergent thinking, and novel communication strategies.