But, Honestly

21 Mar, 2025

I'm not a big fan of drinking games. I've played a few with some college friends when we went out on a trip out of state, and although fun, the ones that most were excited for were those truth-or-dare ones. And perhaps because most of us were and are in our early 20s, some of these were very romantic-life focused, or even deliberate in trying to create tension between the singles within our friend group.

It's fun but there's a time and place for these kinds of games, and typically if I'm out with a closer friend group, I would want to spend time to get to know them more.

There is one drinking game that I find quite fun: One of my friends, D, from college, introduced a card game: But, Honestly. But, Honestly is a Malaysian-made card game intended to "build relationships that go beyond the surface" - essentially, it is a deck of cards with different prompts of varying depth that you can play with your friends to get to know more about one another. Although they market it online as something you would play with your friends, you're also able to play it with your partner, or use the cards as journalling prompts.

Note: Picture of the box - please excuse the lighting and the old box haha

There's a total of 100 cards, and they're split into 3 levels, and 1 'final' card. As you increase in levels, the cards get more personal and the final card is intended to be played at the end of the session. The game can take long, depending on how long one person spends on each question. And from my experience, as you get to the higher level cards, more people would come in to share input and words of affirmations, depending on what is being shared.

Note: You don't have to go over every single card within each level of the deck. Just skip ahead whenever the group/your partner is ready!

I purchased my own copy shortly after trying it out with D and our friend group, as I thought it would be fun to have it out when friends come over or with my partner. I've played this with two separate friend groups as well as my partner and sister and they were great experiences. Some of these questions are stuff that we don't typically ask, especially with friends that you're not super close with. I also like that some of the cards prompt you to interact or address things with your friends, "Thank the person opposite of you for something they have done for you." etc.

Of course, it does depend on the openness of the people within a group or the person you're playing with. From the times I've played it, it does help when someone starts off or eventually shares a little more in-depth versus just touching on the surface. It does take some time to warm-up, which I think the levels system of the game helps with.

Here are some of the cards for each levels!

Note: I feel like the final card ties things up nicely!

All these prompts are of course, something you could probably create on your own or easily generate using AI, but I love the quality of the cards and knowing someone put some thought behind these questions and got everything packaged up. The design is aesthetically pleasing and the cards are well-made. It's also local business, not small, per-say, but these kinds of SMEs aren't the norm here, and I would like to see it survive. One of the co-founders is also a psych graduate from my university, which was nice to know!

They also recently made a couples version of the game, and I would love to get my hands on it one day. If you're interested in picking it up, they ship internationally, though I have a feeling the price might be crazy.

I've done a little research and these are some of the alternatives, that you can check out:

• Fluster
  • These are really pretty! I like the prompts too.
• We're Not Really Stranger
  • They have a few different types of decks, pretty interesting.
• Where Should We Begin
  • 200 prompt cards and there's a dice mechanism too to create variations of the cards.
• Search AliExpress with "truth card games" and there's plenty of cheap alternatives (of varying qualities) that you can find.
• If you're from South East Asia, and something like But, Honestly, is a bit pricey, Shopee and Lazada has plenty of sets similar to those in AliExpress too.

I think it could be fun to create some sort of challenge using similar prompts from these sorts of card games on Bear Blog! Probably with some prompts that won't be too personal but still not something you would typically see on the 'About' page of someone's personal blog. Would you be interested in something like this?

[33/100] for #100DaysToOffload

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