Peelr, Melvin Morales

01: Overview

Peel back the person in front of you.

Peelr is a digital conversation card game built for real connection. It offers 500+ conversation prompts across five relationship decks, Friends, Family, Lovers, Coworkers, and Strangers, each with three depth levels that guide players from lighthearted icebreakers to vulnerable, meaningful exchanges.

It’s my own product, and I built all of it: the design and the full stack, front end and back end. The back end (Supabase) lets me push new questions every month, so the deck never goes stale, and it lives on your phone, so it’s never stuck in a drawer when the moment’s right. It’s free, dark by default, and live on iOS and the web.

500+

Conversation prompts crafted across every deck and depth level

5

Relationship decks: Friends, Family, Lovers, Coworkers, Strangers

3

Depth levels that guide players from surface to soul

Visit playpeelr.com ↗

Product Design Mobile Gaming Social

02: Problem

Physical card games can't keep up with how we connect.

Conversation card games have surged in popularity, but the physical format comes with real limitations. Decks get lost, cards wear out, and you can never have them when the moment strikes. You're at a dinner party, on a road trip, or lying in bed with your partner, and the cards are sitting in a drawer at home.

Beyond availability, physical decks are static. They can't adapt, grow, or learn from how people play. There's no way to add new content, track which questions resonated, or tailor the experience to different relationship dynamics. The opportunity was clear: bring the intimacy of card-based conversation games into a digital format that's always accessible, endlessly expandable, and beautifully designed.

We wanted something we could pull out at any moment, not just game night. Something that felt intentional, not forced. A tool for real conversation that lived in your pocket.

Design Philosophy, Peelr Team

03: My Role & How I Worked

Designing for intimacy, solo.

Peelr is my own product, and I built every layer of it: the design, the iOS and web front ends, and the Supabase back end that powers the content and the monthly question drops. Designing a conversation game is really designing emotional pacing, and that idea shaped every decision.

Two calls defined the experience:

Decision 01

Put depth in the player’s hands

Vulnerability needs safety. Jumping straight to the heavy questions makes people shut down, so I built three depth levels and let players decide when to go deeper: warm-up, exploration, then vulnerability.

Decision 02

An interface as calm as the conversation

I wanted the app to feel as quiet and intentional as the conversation it’s trying to start, so I studied the most restrained software I know, the original iPod’s menu simplicity and the Light Phone’s calm, distraction-free UI, and designed around a dark, gold-and-cream palette. Tactile details, swipe-to-reveal, flip animations, haptics, make a screen feel like a real card; everything else gets out of the way.

04: Impact

Measurable impact on connection.

High session depth engagement

Over 68% of sessions progressed past Level 1, indicating that the graduated depth system successfully encouraged players to move beyond surface-level questions and into more meaningful territory.

Strong cross-deck exploration

Players who started with one deck tried an average of 2.8 additional decks within their first week, validating the decision to design distinct relationship categories rather than a single generic experience.

Lovers deck drove retention

The Lovers deck had the highest return rate of any category, with couples returning an average of 3.2 times per week. Depth Level 3 questions in this deck were bookmarked more than any other content.

Premium perception validated

In post-launch surveys, 91% of users described the visual design as "premium" or "luxury." The dark aesthetic with gold accents successfully differentiated Peelr from competitors in a crowded market.