How it works
One player at a time is the describer. Their phone shows a single word, say Martini, and underneath it a short list of the words they are not allowed to use: olive, gin, vermouth, shaken, Bond. Those are always the five words you want most.
The describer talks. Everyone else shouts guesses out loud. When somebody lands it, the describer taps Got it and the next card arrives. Too hard, tap Pass. When the clock runs out the turn moves on, and a round is one full lap of the table.
Say a forbidden word and the turn is over.
Why it plays well
The good party games make you do something rather than answer something. Hush makes you listen. To your friends, to your own restraint, to the half-second of hesitation before someone slips. The dare isn’t loud. It’s the silence right before the laugh.
It also gets out of the way. Nobody reads rules aloud, nobody keeps score on paper, and nobody has to hand a phone across a table mid-sentence.
Everyone on their own phone
Most party games on a phone are pass-the-handset. Hush isn’t. One person opens a room and reads out the four-letter code; everyone else types it in or scans the code, and from then on each player’s screen shows only what that player should see. The describer sees the card. Nobody else does.
That means the game works across a table, across a couch, or across a video call with the room code in the chat.
What you get
- Over 14,000 cards across 11 categories, each one a word plus the five you may not say.
- Three categories free forever, more than 3,000 cards, with no account, no email, and no advertising.
- Three difficulty settings. The host picks easy, medium or hard, graded within each category rather than against some global scale.
- A timer the host sets: 60, 90 or 120 seconds a turn, and as many rounds as the night has room for.
- Host controls for pausing, resuming and changing the topic mid-game without anyone losing their place.
What you need
Two players minimum. There is no hard cap on a room, but somewhere past ten the shouting stops being fun, so six to eight is the sweet spot.
Each player needs their own phone, tablet or laptop and a connection. This is a live game, not a pass-and-play. It is free to start and there is nothing to sign up for.