Backtalk: Say It Backwards

Say a word into one phone. Backtalk plays it BACKWARDS.
Everyone else records their best copy of that noise, Backtalk flips the attempts back around, and out comes the original word, slightly haunted. Closest copy wins the round.

Backtalk is a pass-and-play party game: one phone · 2–12 friends. No accounts, no internet, no ads, no in-app purchases.

HOW A ROUND GOES
1. A word is spun for whoever is up (or say your own, or hum a tune). Five seconds, tops.
2. The room hears it backwards.
3. Each friend listens, copies the backwards sound, and passes the phone.
4. The reveal plays every copy flipped back, one at a time, with live reactions. Then the room decides.

THE ROOM DECIDES
Blind vote: every copy plays as Mystery 1, 2, 3. Everyone votes on one screen, the names drop after, a tie goes to the robot. Or the person who said the word picks by ear, or asks the robot.

FIVE WAYS TO PLAY
- CLASSIC (2 to 6, teams to 12). The original loop. Closest copy takes the point.
- ECHO CHAIN (3 to 6). Telephone, backwards. Each link only hears the previous one, through the earpiece; only the person who said the word knows it until the reveal.
- DECODER (2 to 6, teams to 12). Type the secret first. Each friend copies it, hears their own attempt flipped back in private, and types a guess. Closest copy scores; a cracked code is worth double.
- SUDDEN DEATH (3 to 6). Elimination: the clock shrinks every round, 5 seconds down to 2, one copy goes home, last one standing wins.
- DUEL (exactly 2). The robot says a word backwards. You both copy it. The robot scores both. First to 3.

TEAMS
Two sides, 4 to 12 players: Fire vs Ice, Cats vs Dogs, Night vs Day or Pizza vs Taco. One side says the word, the other copies, the robot judges, the copying side banks its best two. Team podium, Team MVP, a tiebreaker when banks are level.

HUM IT
Pick the Tunes deck and hum instead: Happy Birthday, a nursery rhyme, anything. The room copies the backwards hum; the robot judges by ear only and never transcribes a hum.

THE ROBOT JUDGE (ON YOUR DEVICE)
Ask the robot and it listens to every attempt on your phone, scores each from 0 to 100, and proposes a winner. It is Apple's on-device speech recognition plus the app's own sound comparison: no AI service, no internet, nothing sent anywhere. A second opinion the person who said the word can overrule; the referee in Teams and Duel. With speech recognition off, or on a hum, it judges by ear.

HIGHLIGHTS, REPLAY, KEEP, SEND
- Before the podium, a short reel: top score, crowd favourite, the robot's funniest mishearing. Skip any time.
- Replay any copy as a chipmunk, a bear, in slow motion or as a robot.
- Keep the clips the room loved. Share one as a short video, or the whole reel, through the iOS share sheet. Always your choice; switch it off in Settings.
- Guess it: a video of up to 15 seconds plays the backwards noise, counts down 3, 2, 1, then reveals the word. The group chat plays along.
- Crew stats on this phone only: wins, streaks and titles for the names you play with.

MADE FOR THE COUCH, AND THE TABLE
- Pass-the-phone screens in each player's colour and a big button saying whose turn it is.
- Any emoji as your avatar, twelve colours, confetti, and a proper podium.
- Table mode on iPad: lay it flat and both sides of the table can read it.
- Quick games by default, one more round, rematch in one tap, Dark mode for sleepovers, and house rules: Blind vote, Fast turns and Speed round (2.5 seconds tops, every clock).

YOUR VOICE STAYS YOURS
Backtalk records only while someone is recording a take, keeps game clips in a temporary folder, and deletes them when the game ends. Clips you tap Keep on stay in the app's own folder, out of your backups, until you delete them. Duel's voice is the one built into your device, reading the game's own words. No accounts, no analytics, no servers, no network requests, no AI service. Nothing leaves your phone unless you share it.

Find out who can talk backwards.