To the Bitter End

Card driven – Selfish relationship – Intimate experience
Lizzie Stark & Bjarke Pedersen
Duration: 3 hours
Number of players: 2

The cutest person you’ve ever seen sits down across from you in a coffee shop. They’re not the Tinder date you’re waiting for – that person never showed. This could be interesting, and maybe even the true love you’ve been waiting for. It’s time to let your most charming self take control. Keep them interested. Keep them committed. And don’t fuck it up.

To the Bitter End is an intimate, two-person experience about the lifecycle of a relationship, from the first blush of love to the gut-wrenching, messy end.

Two sets of cards guide you through the story as you spark, nurture, and ultimately destroy a romance between two characters. One provides scene prompts, the other delivers behaviors to riff on during each scene. Those behaviors shift over the course of the game from the cosy “Twirl your hair” to the downright awful “Use crying as a weapon to get what you want”.

The game features an intense ride through a soon-to-be doomed relationship. It includes some physical contact, and will reward you with an appropriate, but horrific, end.

Bio:
Bjarke Pedersen & Lizzie Stark are a Danish/US writing team who have previously collaborated on Romeo & Juliet: A Larp, created jointly with the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. They hail from larp and freeform, and have created games that cover everything from Shakespeare, breast cancer, and submarines, to vampires and feminism.