Growing up, I was not unfamiliar with the idea of video games. When I was in elementary school, my older cousin came to town and he taught me and my family how to play Mario Cart on our family’s new Wii console. This opened up a new and fantastic world for me and my younger sibling. We spent hours playing that game competing to be the ultimate champion. From there, Wii games such as Wii Party’s Board Game Island and Wii Sports tournaments became a staple for our family game nights and quality time spent with my sibling. However, when my peers at school would talk about video games, I always thought to myself I’m not a gamer.
I held onto this mentality adamantly, and when I started dating my boyfriend, about a year and a half ago, I was slightly resistant to expanding my repertoire of video games since I never associated myself with “gamer culture.” He introduced me to a variety of games including Minecraft, Brawlhalla, and Rocket League. I have enjoyed learning all of these games, but my very favorite game that we have played together is called Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. This game is centered around effective communication with the main goal of the two players being to diffuse a bomb riddled with puzzles. This sounds like an easy enough task, but the catch is that the players have to find a way to speak the same language. One (or multiple) players has a bomb diffusal manual while the other has the computer that displays the bomb and the puzzles. The most challenging rule of the game is that players may not look at each other’s setups, so the player on the manual cannot see the bomb and the player looking at the bomb cannot see the instructions for completing the puzzles necessary to diffuse the bomb. The players must find a way to use descriptive language and develop their own communication style in order to succeed. This is why Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is a game that is ideal for developing and strengthening communication skills that can benefit those who play in many different aspects of life.
There are seven different sections of the game and various amounts of levels in each section. These levels and sections include many different puzzles and challenges including different amounts of time provided. The game gets progressively more challenging as players beat the levels. Here, I will focus on three specific puzzles that improve and challenge players’ communication skills in a variety of different ways.
One of the most common first puzzles to solve in section one of the game is called “Wires.” In this puzzle, the person who sees the bomb displayed sees a grouping of colored wires, and the person with the manual must ask them a series of questions that ultimately leads them to figure out which wire they need to cut. This particular puzzle challenges players to figure out which questions to ask and in what order to ensure that the right wire is cut. The manual displays a series of statements such as “If there are no red wires, cut the last wire,” and these phrases must be transformed from statements into questions that can guide the players in figuring out what wire to cut. Simply stating the words from the manual can result in confusion, and I have found great success in asking a series of questions such as “are there any red wires?” While figuring out what wire to cut in order to not explode a bomb is not a skill often used outside of the context of this game, the skill of what questions to ask and in what order, in order to come to a common understanding, is a skill that is necessary for many professions and in everyday conversations.
Another puzzle seen during a fairly early stage of the game is called “Keypads.” This puzzle is challenging because the players must figure out how to describe symbols of varying complexities to one another to determine the order in which buttons must be pressed. The symbols may resemble something familiar such as an upside-down question mark or be something altogether new. Regardless of the familiarity of the symbol, the players begin to develop a common language by learning that “the weird symbol with the line and the triangle” means a particular figure that appears in different iterations of this particular puzzle. I have found that the communication skills and seemingly new language developed through completing this puzzle at different stages of the game extend beyond the game of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. There is a new connection between players of this game, and I firmly believe that communication skills developed in the context of the game are useful when describing other objects or daily events to one another.
In the later sections of the game a puzzle called “Morse Code” starts to appear. This puzzle is by far the most challenging for me and my boyfriend since using Morse Code is a skill that very few individuals our age possess. Determining when the message starts, when the flashes of the code are long or short, and when spaces between letters exist are all challenging factors, not to mention the impending doom of time passing and the bomb potentially exploding. It is on this puzzle, that we have had many bombs explode on us right before we have cracked the code. While Morse Code may seem like an irrelevant skill for people to possess in their everyday lives, digging down and finding the perseverance to try again when you have messed up perceiving the quick flashes of the code is a skill that can be applied in frustrating situations that we encounter daily. There can also be benefits to going with your gut and making an educated guess in this puzzle. When you have less than five seconds left until the bomb explodes and you only have a letter or two of the code figured out, looking at the manual and telling your partner in the game to try something can sometimes lead to great success. This is a valuable skill since it can be challenging to trust your gut and take a risk in a stressful situation.
This was by no means a comprehensive description of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes nor did I describe all of the ways that this game can improve and assist the communication of those who play it, but I sincerely hope that I have convinced you to give this game a try. Maybe diffusing a bomb will help bring you and a loved one closer…you never know!
Full Bomb Defusal Manual: https://www.bombmanual.com/print/KeepTalkingAndNobodyExplodes-BombDefusalManual-v1.pdf
-Emily
New Media: Storytelling in Literature, Films, and Games 
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