Cards Against Humanity Gets Unofficial Web-Based Spinoff: Pretend You're Xyzzy

If you just can't satiate that Cards Against Humanity fix, then a new website that's a complete and utter digital clone of everyone's favorite naughty card game might satiate your urges.

Of course, there's something lost in the translation of this classic party game to the digital world. Namely, bickering with your friends in-person over which pair of cards is the funniest (and, thus, the most deserving of a round's point). We suppose you can keep on doing that via Pretend You're Xyzzy's built-in chat rooms, but it's just not the same.

That all said, the web app is fairly polished for being such an early build of the game, and a lot of people appear to be tuning in to watch others play horrific combinations of cards or, if they so desire, start or join games themselves. We counted around two thousand players as of this article's writing, and the three servers currently running—the names of which you'll just have to find out for yourself—support 3,500 users in total (or 850 concurrent games).

So long as you and your Cards Against Humanity-enthused friends all join the same server (and you all know each other's nicknames, just so you can find one another), one person can create a password-protected game for all to jump into. Our favorite part of Pretend You're Xyzzy is the sheer amount of card packs one can choose from to populate one's game, including official Cards Against Humanity offerings (no doubt painstakingly typed in by the web game's creator) as well as a ton of virtual packs that other users have created.

Yes, that includes some of Cards Against Humanity's rarer packs, including the one created by attendees at a "pitch a card"-style panel at the PAX East 2014 convention back in April of this year.

So, while the online iteration of Cards Against Humanity does lose out a bit in the in-person gross-out factor, it does allow players to have fun with some of the harder-to-get variants of the game they might not otherwise see (unless they make their own cards, of course). The only thing really missing from Pretend You're Xyzzy is that, in fact—the ability to substitute one's own customized card decks into the web app for use with one's friendly games.

We're just happy enough to see that the Web-based game hasn't been taken down by the Cards Against Humanity folk in the year or so that it has been online. Until that happens, have fun bringing Sean Penn to Haiti!