Carked It!

Carked it is how Australians say died. It is also the name of a card game about life, death and beyond, made by The Ageing Revolution, the company Simon Lowe and Leonie Sanderson founded before People Tech Revolution.

A game about life, death and beyond

Three decks and a table of friends, and the subject everybody steers around becomes the one everybody is laughing about. Good Design Australia calls it an "ice-breaker to facilitate difficult discussions about life, death and what we want".

The Carked It! card game laid out on white: a black box with a skull in a party hat, a how to play booklet, and three stacks of green, yellow and blue cards. — The box, the booklet and the decks, from the Good Design Award entry.

What is in the box

A black box with a skull in a party hat on the lid, a how to play booklet, and a deck for each stage of the conversation. The game's own site sums it up: "We all have an eventual demise may as well plan for it while you can!"

Flip a deck to see what it holds.

LIVE

Things worth doing while you still can: a life drawing class, painting your own coffin, confessing the crush you never mentioned.

Yellow cards from the DIE deck fanned across a table beside the box, each illustrated with a different way of dying. — DIE

DIE

How it happens, drawn with a straight face and a joke underneath.

Blue cards from the BYE deck scattered face up, with titles about messages from the beyond and coffin confessions. — BYE

BYE

What is left once you are not there to manage it: messages for afterwards, a confession in the coffin, where the money goes.

How it is played

One person runs the table as Funeral Director. Everybody else finds out how they die, then argues for how they should live before that.

A man in a wide-brimmed hat holds a Carked It! card up to camera above a wooden table with the decks spread out below him.

Who wins

The Legendary Death Doula

Whoever ends with the most points is crowned the Legendary Death Doula.

Pick a Funeral Director
Split the cards into the LIVE, DIE and BYE decks, face down. The birthday closest to Halloween goes first.
Draw your fate
Each player turns over a DIE card and tells the table how they go.
Argue for the last days
The Funeral Director deals LIVE cards and the table argues for how the dying player spends their time. BYE cards follow the same way.
Play the Eulogy Wildcard
Two people stand for 30 seconds each and honour somebody sitting right there.

Want a game built for your team?

Open the contact form

The people who made it

The team board from the award entry: a grid of portrait photographs above the logos of the participating organisations, including The Ageing Revolution, Guildmaster, Hummingbird House, the Good Death Impact Network and the Australian Centre for Social Innovation. — The team and the organisations that took part, from the award entry.

A company about ageing, and the people it called in

Carked It! came out of The Ageing Revolution, the Brisbane company Simon Lowe and Leonie Sanderson founded in 2015 after driving around Australia asking older people what ageing was really like.

Simon brought in game designer Hannah Ford-Morgan of Guildmaster Games and artist Miki Brogan, whose drawings gave the game its face. The Good Death Impact Network co-designed it with them.

From Three Days to Die to a party hat

Two years of drafts and playtests, with palliative care staff and young people consulting, turned a black box called Three Days to Die into a skull in a party hat. The mascot was drawn gender neutral, ageless and colour diverse, so nobody at the table feels they are the one being talked about.

The prototypes board from the award entry: early character sketches and cemetery reference photographs above rows of boxes, from the early Three Days to Die name in black to the final Carked It! with a skull in a party hat. — **The prototypes.** Every version, from the plain black box to the one that made people laugh.

The testing board from the award entry: two completed playtest feedback forms with handwritten notes above photographs of groups playing the game at a Probus meeting, in a pub and around an outdoor table at home. — **The playtests.** The handwritten notes that changed the rules, including how to win.

Played and tested with

Good Death Impact Network
Australian Centre for Social Innovation
Hummingbird House
LGBTQIA+ social groups
Brisbane Global Game Jam
A Probus club
A pub
A back deck at home

Seen at the table

The Ageing Revolution films it doing what the award entry says it does: a pub table, two drinks, and a conversation about dying that nobody wants to end.

Two people sit at a wooden pub table with beers and the Carked It! cards spread between them, looking up at the camera.

"Players who can see the funny side of just about anything/everything will have a riot."
Games Gazette UK

"This game was awesome! Non-stop laughs and curious conversations about everything!"
Anna, a player in Australia

Recognised and backed

The awarded Carked It! card game: the black box with its party hat skull beside the three decks.

Australian Good Design AwardSocial ImpactRead the award entry at Good Design Australia

"This unconventional party game, that encourages and stimulates better conversations around dying and death, has been co-designed and partially funded by the Good Death Impact Network."
The Ageing Revolution, Our Story. The network is supported by The Wicking Trust.

Play it, buy it, plan with it

Pick a card. Each one opens on The Ageing Revolution's own site.

Play online

Deal a game in the browser at CarkedIt Online.

play.carkedit.com

Buy the box

The First Edition, "the hilarious Australian-made game that will help you get ready for your final days!"

The Carked It! shop

Take the Will Kit

A free starting point for telling the people you love what you want. The game's Serious Stuff page asks: "Do people know what you want when you are taken to hospital?"

The Will Kit, PDF

The work PTR does now

A card takes the weight off the person who would otherwise have to raise the subject. A headset does the same, and so does a practice partner who cannot be embarrassed. That is the thread from Carked It! to PTR's virtual reality training and AI roleplay.

A patient in bed, close enough to answer.

A practitioner rehearses a conversation beside a facilitator. An AI roleplay scenario for AI roleplay and practice. — The hard sentence, said once before it counts.

Want a game built for your team?

Open the contact form

Sources

The people who made the game, and the award that recognised it.

Award entry
Carked It! A Card Game About Life, Death and Beyond

Good Design Australia, Australian Good Design Awards

The credits, the Social Impact category and the design process boards. good-design.org
Product site
Carked It!

The Ageing Revolution, product site

Where the game is sold and played online. carkedit.com
Blog
Meet the Creators

Carked It! blog

Names Simon Lowe, Hannah Ford-Morgan of Guildmaster Games and artist Miki Brogan. The post calls the earlier design Two Days To Die; the printed testing sheet reads Three Days to Die. Read the post
How to play
How to Play

Carked It!, the game's own rules page

The Funeral Director, the decks, the Halloween birthday, the Eulogy Wildcard and the Legendary Death Doula. carkedit.com/how-to-play
Company
Our Story, and Serious Stuff

Carked It!, The Ageing Revolution

The Good Death Impact Network co-design and funding, The Wicking Trust, the advance care planning question and the free Will Kit. Our Story and Serious Stuff
Video
The Ageing Revolution on YouTube

The channel that films the game being played

Where the clips above come from. The Ageing Revolution channel