One Word: Pass the Phone

One Word is a story written by everyone at the table, one word at a time. Pass the phone. Type a word. Pass it on. A, an and the are free in front of your word, and one mark after it is free too, so "the fox" or "breakfast." is a single turn. The story grows on the screen in a typeface that makes it look like a page, and when it reaches its length, or the owner ends it, everyone reads it back. Then play again with the same people, or share the finished story as text. THREE WAYS TO PLAY Together: the whole story stays in view while you write. Or narrow the view to the last three, five or ten words and see how quickly a plot goes sideways. Secret Story: each player sees only the word before, adds one, and passes. Nobody sees the whole story until the end, when a reveal screen says "The end." and the page appears. With AI: play alone, or with friends, against a personality that lives on this phone. Dramatic, Absurd, Noir, Shakespearean or Gentle. Its words are labelled as its own and it takes its turn like anybody else. No account, no connection, no data leaving the phone. THE RULES ARE SMALL AND FIRM One authored word per turn, up to 40 letters, with contractions and possessives allowed. A sentence needs a few words before it can end, and nobody ends two sentences in a row. Five seconds to take a word back after you send it. A turn timer you choose, from thirty seconds to ten minutes, or no timer at all. When the story finishes, a card shows how many words each player wrote and each player's share. KEPT ON THE PHONE Stories and player names are stored on the device and nowhere else. There is no sign-in and no server. A backup screen saves everything as one file you can restore on a new phone. A story still being written in secret stays out of that file until it finishes. NOTHING BEHIND THE GAME No advertising, no analytics, no purchases in this release. The app never opens a browser and sends nothing by itself. A finished story leaves the phone only when a player taps Share. What is on the screen is the whole product. Privacy policy: https://oneword.californiadepartmentoflove.com/privacy.html Support: https://oneword.californiadepartmentoflove.com/support.html