Made to be played, not studied.
We make things that bring a Muslim household into the same room — two people or five — and that nobody has to be talked into.
For a long time, a game made for Muslims meant a quiz. Well meant, built to teach, and quietly left in the cupboard.
We wanted the other thing. Something good enough that you reach for it on an ordinary evening, and the deen is in it the way it is in the rest of the house — present, without standing at the front of the room.
Whoever is at the table.
Some nights that is the two of you. Some nights it is everybody, and the youngest one is losing. We are building for both, and for the years in between when a household changes shape.
Three things, and we do not bend them.
Fun is the requirement.
Not the reward for getting through the lesson. If a thing is not good enough to want on a normal evening, it does not ship. Nothing we make should have to be endured for its own good.
The deen sits inside it.
Woven through the thing rather than printed on top of it. It should feel like a Muslim home feels — faith in everything, announced by almost nothing.
Made for the room.
Everything we make needs another person in it. Not a thing you do by yourself while other people are nearby — a reason for the people in a house to sit down facing each other.
Games, mostly. Not only games.
We started with cards because cards are the shortest distance between two people and a conversation. It will not stop there.
One Step Closer
A card game for Muslim couples. Three hundred and sixty-five nights, one question at a time, with a free companion app that keeps the year.
Founder portrait
This note is not finished. The passages marked in gold are placeholders and cannot ship — they have to be written by hand.
Where it startedWe kept buying things for our family that nobody wanted to play twice.
[The moment — the specific thing that made you build this. A night, a game left in a cupboard, something you noticed at a family gathering. One or two sentences, concrete. This is the most important passage on the page and it has to be yours.]
So we started writing prompts on [index cards / a notes app]. Most of them were bad. The ones that were not had something in common: people kept talking after the card was finished.
[One line on who "we" is — you, your family, whoever is building this with you.]
[Your name]