An Entertainment Property in Development

The water is going down and the drama is going up. Can you all escape to the river in time? Somebody here is going to see you for real.

A Cooperative British Card Game · Three to Ten Players · About Twenty Minutes

I.  The Premise A Sinkhole, a Canal, and You

A sinkhole has opened beneath an English canal, and the water is going.

The cut is draining away and coughing up everything it has ever swallowed - shopping trolleys, traffic cones, half a mattress, last year's turkey bones. There is one boat still to get down the flight of locks to the river, and nobody about but you lot: the gongoozlers, who turned up to stand on the towpath with your hands in your pockets and watch other people work.

Gongoozling is a real word for a real English pastime - the gentle art of watching the narrowboats go by. It stops being an option at roughly the same moment the water does.

Three to ten players, one crew, about twenty minutes. You will haul a quite extraordinary amount of rubbish out of a canal, some of it useful. You will not all agree on the best way to go about it. The canal does not care either way.

Warm, silly and thoroughly British. No traitors, no eliminations, nobody sent home early.

Who floats your boat?

II.  The Drama Everyone Is Filming It

  1. 09:15

    The Drone

    It hovers. That is the whole of it. It is extremely good at it.

  2. 10:20

    Every Serious #Influencer

    A ring light, on a towpath, in February. Could you do that again? Slower. With more panic.

  3. 11:00

    The Man From The Ministry

    He has a clipboard. He would like to know who authorised the sinkhole.

  4. 16:00

    The Petition

    A woman is collecting signatures against the sinkhole. She is doing very well.

Meanwhile, the water keeps going.

III.  The Real Question Player, or Onlooker?

A view down an English canal, framed through a circular stone aperture in a bridge. A line of moored narrowboats stretches into the distance, with overhanging trees on the opposite bank and hills beyond.

Are you the one who reaches in,

or the one who watches?

Would you own up?

Would you volunteer?

The person beside you

already thinks they know.

You came to gongoozle.

You will leave gongoozled.

You are about to find out.

IV.  Enquiries Letters of Interest

Gongoozled® is in development as a card game. Digital, publishing and television rights are available.

For licensing, production or development enquiries: