Why we made a card game about gay dating apps

Headless Torsos started the way most bad ideas do: during lockdown, bored, scrolling an app full of faceless torsos and openers that all sounded the same. The screenshots piled up. Friends kept sending more. At some point the group chat was funnier than anything on the shelf in a games shop.

So we started writing them down. Every INBOX card in the game comes from a real message — from my own inbox, plus the inboxes of two boyfriends, one of whom is now an ex. A handful of the most unhinged ones came from Reddit and Instagram. Not a single card was written by AI, because AI cannot invent the specific horror of "hey" followed by nothing for four days.

The game was prototyped (or rather procrastinated) for six years before it launched in summer 2026. It is made in the UK, it is 17+, and it is designed for 3 to 10 people who are comfortable roasting each other for an hour.

If you have ever screenshotted a message purely so someone else could suffer with you, this game is already yours.