That Tracks

Game design and development on That Tracks, a fast party game from Bezzerwizzer Studio (Asmodee) where teams reveal a card and race to match four search terms to the four lines of a trend graph, figuring out when and where things like fidget spinners or selfies actually peaked! The game started as an original concept of mine called Trending, born in the car while listening to a podcast about the children's book If the World Were a Village, chasing the idea of a trivia game that escapes the tired format of reciting facts, names, and dates in favor of something you feel and reason out together. Turning that spark into a real game meant doing the groundwork, including researching how the Google search-trend data actually worked and what it would cost to pull for a game (as it turned out, shockingly cheap, roughly ten cents per trend).

That research proved the concept could work, grounding a fun idea in real, verifiable data rather than guesswork. The published result keeps the original goal intact: a trivia-style party game that rewards intuition and teamwork over memorized facts, presented like a quick game show on your table. (I've included an original Trending card as a behind-the-scenes look of what we pitched to publishers. Play along! Can you guess which trend goes with which graph?)