TRANSMISSION 01 / LISTENCON 2035
The Resonants is a collaborative story game about listening. Enter its world, examine the choices that make it work, then tune those choices into a game of your own.
ABOUT THE GAME / ORIENTATION
The Resonants is a 90–100-minute collaborative story game for two to five players and a facilitator. Players become speculative listening professionals invited to ListenCon 2035, where communication with animals, objects, and the natural world has become ordinary—but maintaining meaningful attention has become difficult. Working in character, the group creates an “Echo Frame”: guidance for The Pause, an annual day devoted to intentional listening.
The game moves through timed creative prompts involving sound, song, images, and dissonance. Character perspectives, artifacts, limits, and safety tools shape each contribution to the shared frame. It ends with a question imagined by an eight-year-old in 2035, followed by an out-of-character debrief about what challenged the group, what will continue to echo, and what might be remixed for another setting.
WHY THIS GAME?
When communication is abundant, attention becomes a practice.
The fiction creates enough distance to examine how we listen now—and enough freedom to imagine how listening could change.
THE GAME / 01
Sound is abundant. Shoes diagnose imbalance. Trees ask for nutrients. Communication has no edge—and attention has become a practice worth protecting.
THE PLAY LOOP
Each phase changes what the team listens through—and what listening can reveal.
5 MIN
Invent the sounds of 2035. Notice what emerged, survived, or disappeared.
IMAGINE10 MIN
Use a selected song to shape the first layer of the Echo Frame.
INTERPRET10 MIN
Respond to an image and create at least two questions for visual listening.
QUESTIONFINAL PHASE
Contrast at least five sounds from the past and 2035. Name why the tension matters.
CONNECTTHE FINAL MOVE
Imagine an eight-year-old in 2035 learning about older ways of listening. What one question do they bring to an adult?
HOW TO PLAY / 02
The full game contains richer prompts and timed phases. This is the signal path—the simple sequence players travel from preparation to reflection.
Draw a character, complete its prompts, and share your lines and veils.
Imagine the sounds of 2035 and introduce yourself through your character’s listening practice.
Respond to a song, an image, and contrasting sounds. Add guidance to one shared artifact.
End with a child’s question from 2035, step out of character, and debrief together.
THREE WAYS IN
A remix can be small. Change one design choice, then notice how it alters what players do and feel.
Move from ListenCon 2035 to a family archive, classroom, workplace, ecosystem, or another imagined future.
↘ 02Invent character roles that notice the subject from different—and usefully conflicting—perspectives.
↘ 03Replace the song, image, and sounds with objects, maps, memories, movement, food, or another medium.
↘THE CAST / DRAW ONE
Each role gives a player a point of view, prompts to complete, a relationship to another role, and a phrase that nudges performance. Select a card to read it closely.
ANATOMY / 03
A game is not only its theme. It is a system of permissions, pressures, actions, and consequences. Tap each part to see what it does inside The Resonants.
WORLD / WHY IT MATTERS
Moving listening into 2035 creates distance from everyday habits. Talking trees and diagnostic shoes let players question attention without beginning in abstraction.
A speculative world turns reflection into discovery.
REMIX LAB / 04
Start with intention, not decoration. These three questions move from what players do, to how rules feel, to what your remix will transform.
TRANSMISSION / YOUR REMIX
SIGNAL 0000Next move: make the smallest playable version. Give two people one role, one repeated action, one constraint, and one ending. Then ask what they actually noticed.
KEEP LISTENING