1,000+ questions across 14+ decks, and the only decision that matters is picking the right one for whoever is sitting at your table.
We built Here We Ask at Inithouse as a browser-based conversation card game. Free, no download, no account. You open a URL, pick a deck, and start drawing questions. The whole thing runs as a PWA, so it works offline once loaded.
This post walks through one actual evening: how we picked the deck, which game mode we used, and what we noticed about the zero-friction entry point.
The table: four friends, one couple, one awkward silence
Friday dinner. Six people. Two know each other well, four met that week. Someone pulls out their phone, opens hereweask.com, taps Play. No app store, no "create account," no email confirmation. The game is running before the appetizers arrive.
That sequence matters more than it sounds. We measured this across testing sessions at Inithouse: if the game requires more than two taps to start, at least one person at the table loses interest or starts scrolling something else. The zero-account PWA removes that gap entirely.
Picking a deck by group composition
Here We Ask ships 14+ themed decks. Not all of them fit every table. Here is how we think about the match:
| Group | Deck | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Couple, date night | Closer | Relationship-focused prompts, gradually deeper |
| Couple, playful mood | Spicy | Flirty and daring, escalation built in |
| Close friends (3-6) | Deep Talk | Vulnerable questions that need trust |
| Mixed group, some strangers | Icebreaker | Low-stakes openers, nothing too personal |
| Family with teens | Family Night | Age-appropriate, cross-generation gaps |
| Party (6+) | Party | High energy, group dynamics, some physical |
| Solo / journaling | Mirror Mode (any deck) | Self-reflection, one card at a time |
The Friday dinner group? Icebreaker to start, then switched to Deep Talk after about 20 minutes when the table loosened up. Deck switching takes one tap, mid-game.
Three modes, three pacing styles
The deck is what you talk about. The mode is how the table moves through it.
Classic is the default. Draw a card, someone reads it aloud, everyone answers or the reader picks who goes first. No timer, no pressure. This is what most tables want.
Timed adds a countdown per card. Useful for large groups where one question can eat ten minutes. The timer keeps rotation moving. We found this works best with Party or Icebreaker decks where answers tend to be short.
Hot Seat puts one person in focus. The group draws cards, and everything is directed at whoever is "it." Rotates after a set number of cards. Good for birthday dinners or when someone at the table is the guest of honor.
For the Friday dinner we used Classic. Nobody wanted a timer, and the group was too loosely connected for Hot Seat.
Why the PWA part matters more than features
At Inithouse we build all our card games (Party Challenges, Scary Challenges, Naughty Challenges) as browser-first PWAs. The reasoning is practical.
A conversation card game has maybe a 90-second adoption window. Someone suggests it, the table is either in or the moment passes. If "getting in" means find the app store, download 80 MB, create an account, verify an email... that window closes.
With Here We Ask, the entire onboarding is: someone shares the link or types hereweask.com. The page loads, they pick a deck, the first card appears. On a decent connection, that is under 10 seconds. Add to Home Screen if you want the app icon, but it is not required to play.
Offline support means the game keeps working even if the restaurant Wi-Fi drops mid-round. We use service workers to cache the question database after first load.
What we noticed from this dinner
Three things stood out.
The Icebreaker-to-Deep-Talk switch happened naturally. Nobody announced it. One person just said "can we do harder questions?" and someone else tapped the deck picker. That mid-game switching is something we deliberately kept frictionless in the UI.
Hot Seat would have been wrong here. The group did not know each other well enough for directed questions. Having modes means the host (or whoever holds the phone) can match the energy without leaving the game.
One person at the table installed the PWA by the end of the evening. They opened it the next morning as a journaling prompt with Mirror Mode. That solo use case was not what we originally built for, but it keeps showing up in our usage data.
Try it
Here We Ask is free to play in any browser, no account needed. Pick a deck that fits your next dinner and see what your table actually starts talking about.
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