The Science of Failure
FTG: A party game built on 90 years of cognitive psychology
Don't read blue
The card game that makes smart people feel genuinely stupid. Backed by peer-reviewed psychology since 1935.
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Your brain versus itself
Try not to read.
Eight rounds. Four rules, exactly like the real deck. Black text names the background. Coloured text names itself. Swear words get said out loud. F**K never does.
What do you shout?
RED
You failed 0 of 8.
The real game has 60 cards, 4 rule cards, swear words, and The Slap.
Get the real deckWhat the Stroop Effect is
Reading gets in the way.
Read the word, but say the colour it is printed in. Your brain reads the word automatically. Naming the colour forces a conflict. The result is real, measurable cognitive interference, not a party trick.
- The effect was first published by John Ridley Stroop in 1935 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
- A 1991 integrative review by Colin MacLeod covered more than 700 studies of the effect.
- Functional neuroimaging studies show the anterior cingulate cortex activating during Stroop interference, the brain region involved in conflict monitoring.
How FTG weaponizes it
Then we make it worse.
Players take turns flipping over a card and shouting out what they see. Depending on the card, you might say its background colour, its text colour, or the swear word written on it.
- Black text - say the background colour.
- Coloured text - say the colour of the text.
- Swear word - say the swear word.
- F**K - you never say it. Apply the colour rules instead, while the loudest word in the English language stares at you and dares you to slip.
Muck it up or take too long and the table slaps the pile. The winning slapper gives two cards from the pile to anyone they choose. The rest go to the loser, who goes again. The first player to lose all their cards wins.
60 playing cards, 4 rule cards, a 12-page instruction booklet. 2-8 players. 15-30 minutes. 18+. Designed in Perth, Australia.
Why failing is fun
The frustration is the feature.
When expectations are calibrated up front, players laugh instead of rage. Failing in front of friends is the moment. Everyone fails, so nobody is bad at the game. It is the exact opposite of a trivia game: being smart will not save you, and getting it wrong is what brings the table together.
Sources
The science FTG is built on. Read the papers yourself.
- Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18(6), 643-662.
- MacLeod, C. M. (1991). Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: An integrative review. Psychological Bulletin, 109(2), 163-203.