Round 1
Each prompt goes to two players. With up to 8 players, you get two prompts and 80 seconds. With 9 or more, you get one prompt and 50 seconds (when the numbers are odd, one random player gets a second). Press Enter to submit.
Games for software engineers
Merge Conflict The funniest-answer game, engineering edition
Two answers enter. One gets merged.
Merge Conflict is the engineering edition of Double Booked, the funniest-answer game. You write short answers to prompts about code review, builds and the deploy you shouldn’t have done on a Friday. Two players answer each prompt, everyone else votes, and the answer they like best wins.
It runs in a browser tab next to your editor, with the call open. The Dev Life pack is on, and the rest of the prompts stay in the mix, so nobody needs a computer science degree to follow every round. Mixed team of engineers, designers and PMs? Double Booked keeps every joke one everybody gets.
Start a partyAt a glance
- Players
- 3–16, best with 3–8
- Audience
- up to 100, watching and voting
- Length
- about 6 minutes (Short) or 8–12 minutes (Standard)
- Plays on
- any laptop or phone with a modern browser
- Price
- free
How to play
The short version
- 1
Write. Answer your prompts in 60 characters or fewer.
- 2
Vote. Answers face off in pairs, anonymously. Pick the one you like best.
- 3
Ship it. Points follow the votes. Get every vote in a matchup and your answer ships.
Voting
Each matchup shows the prompt and two anonymous answers. Click or tap the one you like, or press 1 or 2 (the arrow keys work too). You have 20 seconds, and you can change your vote until voting closes.
If one of the answers is yours, you sit that matchup out.
Nobody sees which way the vote is going until the reveal. Then the votes land on the answers, the authors are named, and the points count up.
SHIP IT!
If every player who votes picks the same answer, and at least two of them voted, that answer gets the SHIP IT! stamp and 250 bonus points.
DUPLICATE
If two players write the same answer, it gets stamped DUPLICATE and skips the vote. Nobody scores. Great minds, zero points.
AutoComplete™
Stuck? Press “AutoComplete it” and AutoComplete™ fills in a suggestion. It will be extremely bland, along the lines of “Great question! It depends.” Submit it as is and it scores half points and can’t get a SHIP IT! stamp. Change it and it’s yours. If you run out of time, AutoComplete™ answers for you, also at half points.
Round 2: Double points
Standard games only. New pairings, and every point counts double. Short games go straight to the final.
The Last Word
The final round. The calendar flips to Friday, 4:59 p.m., and everyone answers the same acronym prompt, like “What L.G.T.M. really stands for.” You get 75 seconds and 80 characters. Letter tiles light up as your words match the acronym. That’s a hint, not a rule: funny beats accurate.
Then everyone awards gold, silver and bronze medals to three different answers, never their own. You have 40 seconds. In a three-player game there are only two other answers, so you award gold and silver. The audience gets a say too, worth one extra voter’s medals.
The medals land, the answers re-sort by points, and the highest total score wins the game. Ties share the podium.
Scoring, in plain words
- Every matchup is worth 1,000 points (2,000 in Round 2), split by share of the vote.
- The answer with more votes gets a winner’s bonus: 100 points (200 in Round 2).
- A SHIP IT! adds 250 more (500 in Round 2).
- The audience counts as one extra vote, split the way the audience voted.
- AutoComplete™ answers score half. Duplicates and censored answers score nothing.
- In The Last Word, a gold medal is worth 750 points, silver 500 and bronze 250.
- Highest total after The Last Word wins.
Example
In Round 1, four players vote 3 to 1. The winning answer gets 750 for its share of the vote plus the 100 bonus, so 850. The other gets 250. If all four had voted for it, it would get 1,000 + 100 + 250 = 1,350.
Players and timing
- 3–16 players, best with 3–8. Up to 12, everyone gets their own mascot. From 13, mascots can repeat in different colors.
- Audience: up to 100 people. Anyone who arrives mid-game joins the audience and moves into a seat at the next game if one is free.
- Short: one round plus The Last Word. About 6 minutes.
- Standard: two rounds plus The Last Word. About 8–12 minutes, depending on group size.
- Best for: a Monday kickoff (Short), a Friday wind-down (Standard), or a new hire’s first week.
| Timer | Normal | With Extended timers |
|---|---|---|
| Write, two prompts | 80 s | 160 s |
| Write, one prompt | 50 s | 100 s |
| Vote, per matchup | 20 s | 40 s |
| The Last Word, write | 75 s | 150 s |
| The Last Word, medals | 40 s | 80 s |
Every phase ends early once everyone has answered or voted, so a quick group finishes well inside the timers.
Play on Zoom, Meet or Teams
Stay on the call for faces and voices. Start a party, paste the invite link into the chat, and everyone plays in their own browser tab, on a laptop or a phone. Nobody screen-shares the game, so there is no laggy stream to squint at. It’s free, and nobody signs up or installs anything. Looking for a free Quiplash or Jackbox alternative for work? This is it.
Tips
- Be specific. “A meeting” loses to “the meeting about the meeting.”
- Write for the room. A joke your team gets beats a joke anyone would get.
- Keep it short. 60 characters is a ceiling, not a target.
- Use the keyboard. Enter submits. 1 or 2 votes. The arrow keys work too.
- Don’t let AutoComplete™ write for you. It scores half and never ships.
- Play the letters in The Last Word. The tiles light up as you match them, but a funny answer that misses a letter can still win.
- Spend your medals well. You can’t medal your own answer, so give gold to whatever made you laugh first.
- VIPs, match the game to the meeting. Short for a team meeting, Standard for socials, Extended timers for big groups or phone typists.
Sample prompts
Eight real prompts from the game.
- Dev Life
The real reason the build is red
- Dev Life
A code review comment that’s technically polite and absolutely devastating
- Dev Life
Why the tests pass on your machine and nowhere else
- Dev Life
The worst thing to say out loud while screen-sharing a live demo
- Dev Life
What the rubber duck would say if it could talk back
- Dev Life
What the CI pipeline is actually doing for those 40 minutes
- Dev Life
A “temporary” fix that’s been in production for six years
- Work Life
The least quick topic ever booked as a “quick sync”
And one from The Last Word:
What A.S.A.P. really stands for in an email subject line
Settings
The VIP (usually whoever started the room) changes these in the lobby. Everyone else can see them.
- Family filter on by default
- Swaps profanity in names and answers for comic grawlix, like #@$%!. Leave it on for anything your manager attends. The VIP can still censor any answer.
- Extended timers off by default
- Doubles the time to write and vote. Good for big groups, phone typists and anyone who likes to think before they type.
- Audience on by default
- Lets late arrivals, and anyone past the 16th player, watch and vote. Together the audience counts as one extra vote. Turn it off for a closed game.
- Prompts for Engineering in this edition
- Any team: Work Life and Everyday. Meetings, mute buttons, the home office, cameras off, and everyday life with a light office flavor. The game is Double Booked here. Works at any team social.
- Engineering: adds Dev Life: git, deploys, code review, the utils folder. This is Merge Conflict. Mixed room? Keep Any team, the Double Booked edition, so nobody’s left out.
- Customize: turn the packs on and off one by one (keep at least one).
- Length Standard by default
- Standard is two rounds plus The Last Word, about 8–12 minutes. Short is one round plus The Last Word, about 6.
VIP controls during a game
- Pause and resume.
- Skip the current timer.
- Censor an answer during voting or medals. It’s hidden and scores nothing.
- Remove a player.
- Lock the room, so nobody new can join.
- End the game and go back to the lobby.
If the VIP drops off for more than 20 seconds, the VIP role passes to whoever has been connected longest.
