Hi DEV community 👋
I’m Sarah, and I recently launched something I’ve been thinking about for over 16 years: a social game called JuryNow.
It’s a simple, idea whereby there are 12 randomly selected people from around the world from age 16 - 99 from different cultures, languages, backgrounds, professions. You ask a question and get a perfectly objective verdict back in 3 minutes!
Your question could be a fashion dilemma (you can upload two images) or a moral dilemma, or a workplace problem or a big life decision, or settling a family argument, or just a trivial question about where to put your sofa.
In 3 minutes, you will receive verdict from 12 people with no commentary, No discussion, No tips, just a binary verdict.
While you wait for your verdict, you play JuryDuty - answering everyone else's questions on any subject.
The idea behind JuryNow is that we can ask our peer group, family, friends or professionals...but how about a completely objective group from around the world instead? The game is inspired by King Solomon's Paradox who was famous for giving brilliant inspired advice and judgements, but terrible for his own life decisions.
The inspiration
London's diversity is demonstrated on The London Underground where there are two rows of 6 seats. You can imagine sometimes that with the 12 passengers, there are 12 languagues, cultures, professions, ages...it is the perfect jury, and their collective opinion could be priceless!
That’s when I realized: the internet could do this.
How JuryNow works
You upload a dilemma (e.g., “Should I tell my friend their partner hit on me?”)
While your question is live, you serve “Jury Duty” and vote on other people’s questions.
After 3 minutes, you receive your verdict: a breakdown of how 12 strangers voted.
That’s it. No commentary. No social profiles. Just pure, anonymized collective judgment.
Why it’s not AI-powered
I believe we still want real, human insight for certain types of decisions, especially when facing big or weird decisions, and sometimes, we want to know that we can connect to people around the world and have a meaningful yet anonymous connection!
JuryNow has just launched with a MVP and works!
What I used to build it
I’m not a developer. I built JuryNow on Bubble with help from tutorials, trial-and-error, and the 4 hours of help from an amazing developer. I’ve been teaching myself slowly, just enough to get the MVP off the ground. It’s basic, and after testing it extensively for 4 months, there are still one or two glitches...But for most of the time, people are now playing it!
The Reddit launch
I posted JuryNow to r/gamedev, and it unexpectedly blew up:
120,000 views
92% upvote rating
A flood of positive comments
But now, it’s quiet again. And JuryNow only works if people are using it across time zones. If less than 13 people are playing, there is a temporary feature necessary to demonstrate its functionality whereby your verdict will be simulated by AI. As soon as there are regular players across time zones, this will be permanently dismantled! And a lot of the time, the verdicts are coming from 12-person real live juries which is great!
Why I’m here
I’m sharing this not just to promote JuryNow but because I know this community understands the desire to build something meaningful and the need for real players.
If you have 3 minutes, I’d love you to try it. Ask something serious or silly. Or just jump in and vote on someone else’s question.
I’m also open to collabs, advice, or just hearing what you think. If you’ve ever felt like the internet should be more human—less algorithmic, more empathetic—I’d love to connect.
Thanks for reading,
Sarah
