It was created as a substitute to the classic social games that you might play with your friends over a few drinks, however, instead of encouraging drinking, it encourages thoughtful conversation (and drinking, if you want).

Max Eisen developed Convoke in April 2022, and continues to maintain it.

A game of Convoke is started by pressing the Play card on the home page.

There, you will select how many players are playing, and enter a name for each player (in the order that you want to play).

Next, you have the opportunity to select which topics you'd like the game to focus on. You can Select All or even just one (we'll get to how these topics are used in just a second).

Press Play and let the conversation begin.

Each player will have a turn to choose one question in each round (for their turn, a player is known as the Thought Dealer).

When the Generate button is pressed, one of your enabled topics is chosen at random, and an AI-generated question appears.

The Thought Dealer can choose to Re-generate a question up to two times, selecting the question they like the best.

Once the Thought Dealer chooses a question, they press Select and pose the question to the other players, passing the phone to the next player to begin with responses.

Now, in rotation, each player has a set amount of time (30 seconds for 2-4 players, 20 seconds for 5-12 players) to give their most thoughtful answer.

Before a player begins to respond to the question, they press the Start button to start a timer indicating how much time they have left to respond.

Once each player has shared their answer, the Thought Dealer retrieves the phone and makes a decision on who shared the best response, selecting only one name, and further discussing their response, if they choose.

After each question, the scoreboard is updated with each player's name, score, and questions that they won (these can be revisited for further discussion).

Once each player has selected and judged one question, a round is complete, and the next round can begin by pressing Next Round.

There are 3 rounds in a game of Convoke, making for a total of 3 x <number of players> conversation-provoking questions (e.g. 15 questions for a 5-player game).

Once all rounds are complete, the game is over, and the winner is determined by calculating the player(s) with the highest score.

A new game can be played by pressing Play Again, or further discussion can be held on the current game's question.

Daily questions are more personal questions intended to get you thinking even when you're not playing the game.

They're also a great way to provoke conversation with friends when they're not physically with you.

Check out the Daily page to see and respond to daily conversation-provoking questions.

Share the questions and your answers with friends, or keep them to yourself to review on the Past Responses page (only viewable if you've answered at least one question).

A different question is provided each day (the same one for all users), and your responses are completely private - not sent to any database and only stored in your browser's local storage.

Enjoying Convoke? Consider supporting the developer by tipping or sharing the game via the links below.

Other comments, questions or concerns? Click to report a bug, request a feature, or just send some love.

For other Max Eisen projects, visit meisen.dev.