Get on Board: The Shame of Life

With group video chats the new normal for our social lives we’ve quickly figured out a way to make sure we can still get that Friday feeling and drown our collective sorrows. Add The Shame of Life into the mix and it’s soul cleansing– or destroying, depending on the direction this game takes.

Like many games you play as a drunken group – Truth or Dare, Never Have I Ever – things can get embarrassing and quite silly. This indie game from northern developers wants to surpass all previous awkwardness and enhance it tenfold. With a big deck of questions, a player takes one at random and reads it out to the group. The question could either prompt a debate, pose a dilemma or ask you to describe. And chaos ensues.

Which celebrity deathmatch would you like to see? If getting an erection made a sound, what sound would you want it to make? These are just the more innocent questions of the game; the others are Not Safe For Print. There are various game modes to spice things up even more – ensuring no can dodge a question and sometimes forcing a single person to answer multiple questions in a row.

Obviously if the game is being played over video chat only one person will have the deck of cards, but the looseness of this game ensures it’s easy to adapt. The cardholder can become the quiz master, or, if you’d prefer to all play, you can blindly share other players’ hands with them by showing them to the camera.

The cards are very sturdy, almost like the creators knew that alcohol may be floating about during game play, and spills might accidently happen. Of course you don’t need to be intoxicated to play this game – but it helps!

There is lots of fun to be had with The Shame of Life but also a good chance you will find out things about players that you would prefer not to know, so be careful who you play with. Colleagues and family members are perhaps not a good option! Hopefully by the time you have read this and bought the game, you will be free to leave your house and watch your friends squirm in first person as you force them to tell you what song captures the essence of their first sexual encounter.