Manatee: Using Google Nearby Messages to Build a Cross-Platform, Proximity-Based Mobile Client for Cards Against Humanity-Style Party Games

Abstract

Party games like Apples to Apples and Cards Against Humanity are, in many ways, better suited to digital decks than to physical decks: digital decks can be easily created, remixed, combined, and shared, and a single thumb drive can easily store a deck that would fill an entire room if printed. The rise of multiple online Cards Against Humanity clones since the game’s original publication demonstrates that there is a demand for a digital version of the game that provides those advantages. However, while the permissive Creative Commons license under which Cards Against Humanity is distributed allows for remixing and sharing, it does not permit the decks to be used for commercial purposes, and past attempts to produce a web version of the game have struggled to pay for servers and hosting fees. Manatee is a cross-platform mobile game designed specifically for in-person gameplay without the need for a centralized game server or for special hardware. It is built with Xamarin.Forms and Google’s Nearby Messages, and designed to work within Nearby Messages’ inherent latency and bandwidth limitations. Via the Cardcast API, it allows users to choose from both existing published decks and thousands of user-created decks, and lets them start and join games without needing a preexisting shared network or relying on a centralized server.