Sweet Spot: a conversation instead of a scoreboard

Sweet Spot is a conversation card game. The project sums itself up in one line: not a scoreboard, a conversation. This post is about what that line means inside the game: how a card lands, why the guess stays hidden, and what it takes to carry the same ritual onto a screen.

A game with no scoreboard

Most card games end with a number. Who is ahead, who is behind; every move at the table serves that number. Sweet Spot has no such number. The conversation that starts once the cards are open is the game.

That decision shapes the rest of the design. When there are points, players naturally chase them and tune their answers to whatever wins. Take the points away and all a player has left is what they actually think. That is the aim of a conversation game: people at the table talking for the sake of the conversation, not for a score.

But once you remove points, something else has to carry the rhythm. Points are a clock that tells players when to get excited. Without that clock, some other moment in the game has to do the job. In Sweet Spot, that job falls to the order in which cards land and open.

Face-down card, hidden guess

The game uses three decks: Sweet, Sour and Bitter. Each deck has its own back. Everyone at the table can see which deck a card came from, but not what it says.

The card lands face down. The guess stays face down too: it has been made, but nobody can see it. Then the cards open together.

It looks like a small rule, but the honesty of the conversation depends on it. If guesses were made in the open, whoever spoke later could hear the earlier answer and shape their own around it. Opening at the same time lets every guess stand on its own. That is also why the reveal is the most charged moment in the game: when answers given without knowing each other land side by side, there is suddenly something to talk about.

Casus Belli also has cards that land face down and then flip. That is where the resemblance ends. In Casus Belli, the flipped card resolves its abilities and the game moves towards wiping out an army. In Sweet Spot, the flipped card starts a conversation. The same gesture works towards two different ends.

Two lines and a decision

The open card carries two lines; curiosity and conflict sit on the same square. Curiosity opens a subject; conflict makes people stay with it. With both on one card, the conversation does not close on a single answer. One line opens the subject, the other keeps the table on it.

Then the decision card drops: you would, or you would not. Because the yes and no cards share a back, nobody can tell which one was played until it is turned over. The principle behind the hidden guess applies to the decision as well: everyone picks a side without seeing anyone else’s choice.

A yes-or-no decision is a narrowing. There is no middle option. The shades of grey do not disappear, though; they move into the conversation after the reveal. The card makes you pick a side, and you explain to the table why you picked it. In a game without points, that explanation is the real payoff.

Testing at the table, moving to the screen

Sweet Spot’s rules are tested at the table, in playtests. In a game without points, a playtest cannot be measured in points either. What matters is not who won but what happens at the table once the cards are open: does a conversation start, and can the card carry it?

The game’s digital layer is built in Flutter and is live at sweetspot.red. Sweet Spot Digital is in the middle of the move from table game to screen. The aim is to keep the same conversation ritual, whether people play from one device or from separate rooms.

At the table, the card itself keeps things hidden; a face-down card is face down. On screen, the software has to build that same secrecy. A guess should stay invisible until everyone is ready, and the cards should still open together. Since that order is the heart of the ritual, the digital layer’s job is not to invent a new game but to carry the order to a new medium without breaking it. For people sitting in separate rooms, too, the card lands, the guess stays hidden, and the cards open together.

In 2026 Sweet Spot went on stage at the Global Indie Game Summit in Izmir (DIGIAGE × Informatics Valley) and was demoed at the LODOS booth. Presenting a conversation game on stage is a different job from playing it at a table, but in both cases the thing to get across is the same sequence.

You can look through the cards and the rest of the game on the project page.