I made an explanation party game in Electric Clojure
ExplainGame (explaingame.com) is a mobile-friendly party game that runs in the browser. The goal of the game is to get your teammates to say the words on your card before the timer runs out, using only word association clues. For example, if you get a term like “Michael Schumacher,” you can say “F1 driver, Ferrari, ski accident” but not “Michael” or “Schumacher.” You can think of it as charades or Pictionary, but instead of acting or drawing, you have to use your words. ExplainGame is a clone of a popular board game in South Africa called 30 Seconds, or Articulate in the UK. It is meant to…
In plain words
ExplainGame is a browser-based party game where players give word association clues to help teammates guess words on a card before time runs out. Similar to board games like Articulate or 30 Seconds, it replaces acting or drawing with verbal clues—for instance, describing "Michael Schumacher" as "F1 driver, Ferrari, ski accident" without saying the actual name. The mobile-friendly game draws from a deck of 700 general knowledge questions and is designed for in-person group play, solving the problem of physical cards becoming repetitive or unavailable.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
ExplainGame (explaingame.com) is a mobile-friendly party game that runs in the browser. The goal of the game is to get your teammates to say the words on your card before the timer runs out, using only word association clues. For example, if you get a term like “Michael Schumacher,” you can say “F1 driver, Ferrari, ski accident” but not “Michael” or “Schumacher.” You can think of it as charades or Pictionary, but instead of acting or drawing, you have to use your words. ExplainGame is a clone of a popular board game in South Africa called 30 Seconds, or Articulate in the UK. It is meant to be played in-person. This mobile-friendly version solves the two main problems with 30 Seconds: - the cards get old over time. - you don't always have it on you. In ExplainGame, each card is uniquely drawn from 700 answers to general knowledge questions in the free deck. In future, you will be able to purchase expansion card decks @ $1.50 that will be category-specific, e.g. 80s Music, Rugby, Football, Formula 1, etc. Join a nearby game using geolocation or scan the host's QR code. You can share phones between teams by tapping "Add Player" to add local players. The game was built over 3 weekends in ~1,600 lines of Electric Clojure, backed by Datalevin (embedded Datomic). There exists no other tech stack today in which I could have built a real-time, multiplayer board game with this level of polish on such a short time frame. I can highly recommend Dustin Getz's Hytradboi talk on Electric Clojure (formerly Photon): https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/uis-are-streaming-dags One current drawback is that sometimes a card may contain many terms from the same category like country names or famous people. In future, each card will draw terms from different categories. It is currently hosted on Fly.io across 3 regions (LAX, LHR & JNB). I am monitoring load to scale, but apologies if it falls over – I'm not sure how much load a Show HN will cause. The game is dedicated to my late sister, Gesie Theron, who loved this game. Feel free to play a few rounds and send constructive feedback to [email protected], or follow @ExplainGameApp on Twitter for updates. Enjoy!
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