It started on a Tuesday when we had nothing left to say

Chapter one

How did CouplesGames.org start?

CouplesGames.org started on an ordinary Tuesday in 2019. Ben and I had been together six years, and that evening we sat on the same sofa for two hours, each scrolling our own phone, and said maybe eleven words to each other. Nothing was wrong between us. That was exactly the problem.

I remember putting my phone face down and doing a quiet inventory. I knew how Ben takes his coffee, which socks he refuses to throw out and what he orders at every restaurant in town. I had no idea what was keeping him up at night that month. We had become very good roommates.

Chapter two

Forty index cards and one rule

The next evening I came home with a pack of index cards from the drugstore. We each wrote twenty questions, shuffled them into one pile and agreed on a single rule: you can pass once a night, and only once.

Ben drew first. His card, in my handwriting, asked: What is something you have wanted to tell me but never found the right moment for? We went to bed at two in the morning. I still have that card. It lives in a box on our bookshelf, a little bent at one corner.

We kept playing. Some nights were silly (What is the worst haircut you ever paid for?), some got quiet and honest, and a few made us late for work. Any card that made one of us blush got a small red dot in the corner.

Chapter three

How did a shoebox of cards become Loopy?

Loopy grew out of that shoebox once our friends started asking to borrow it. By then the red-dot cards had their own pile, the silly ones had another, and the pile we argued about most needed a name. Five piles became the five decks in Loopy today: Talks, Fun Activities, Kisses, Fondles and Secret.

Choosing a pile turned into its own small argument, so Ben cut a wheel out of a cereal box, drew five slices on it and pinned an arrow through the middle with a paper fastener. Spin, read, play. That cardboard wheel is the spinner board in every Loopy box. The satin blindfold came later, after a dare that honestly needed one.

Loopy first went on sale on Amazon, where couples have left more than 4,000 ratings. Today we ship it ourselves from the United States, in a plain outer box with nothing on it that says what is inside.

Meet Loopy

Chapter four

Why do we review other people's games?

We review other couples games because the question we hear most is not is Loopy good? but what should we play next? People wanted a quiz for a long-distance week, a board game for a sister who would never touch a spicy deck, something for a double date.

So we started playing everything we could find and writing down what actually happened at our table.

If another game suits your night better than Loopy, we say so, and we say why. A review site that only ever recommends its own product is an advert, and you can smell one of those from across the room.