About

Catch Dark is a game about not losing yourself.

Somebody texts you. Iago. Your mother. A very polite wolf. Every text hides a trick: flattery, guilt, a threat dressed as manners. You either spot it or you answer it. The board shows what your words did: gold where you held your center, red where you were moved.

Four ways to play

Read Them. Thirty villains out of books, twelve texts each. Name the trick.

Real life. The same tricks at home: the Gaslighter, the Love Bomber, the Narcissist.

Dysfunctional Families. Your family texts you, and you reply in emoji. Calm wins, but composure runs out.

The duels. The long game: three replies a turn, and a board to hold.

And until November 21, the Fairy Tale Tournament: seven villains nobody has seen, $300 to the winner.

The storytellers knew first

Shakespeare wrote five of the best liars ever: Iago, Claudius, Lady Macbeth, Richard III, Edmund. The Brothers Grimm said don't open the door, and sent the Wolf, the Evil Queen and Rumpelstiltskin anyway. Andersen's tailors invented gaslighting. Dickens gave us Uriah Heep, ever so 'umble. Stoker and Stevenson made monsters, the easy part. Wilde and Henry James wrote charming men with terrible advice. Milton, Goethe and Dumas wrote the first sales pitches.

Then the science caught up

Jaak Panksepp on the emotions we share with every mammal. John Gottman on what makes couples last, and what ends them. David Buss on how people manipulate the people closest to them. Jennifer Freyd on DARVO: deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. Frank Stajano and Paul Wilson on why scams work on smart people.

Why

Most of us know what we should have said about an hour after we didn't say it. The gap between the two is where a life gets lost: in small rooms, with people we love, one reply at a time.

You can't practice that in real life without paying for it. You can practice it here.

Who

Catch Dark is written by one person, a writer and filmmaker in Mexico City, with a lot of help from machines. Every text is written, checked against the stories and the science, and played before it ships. New villains arrive most weeks.

The month

The first villains on every shelf are free. Everything else is $20 a month; cancel anytime. You sign in with a code sent to your email. There's no app to install, and nothing is sold to anyone.

Questions, a villain you'd like to see, a line that's wrong: journey@catchdark.com