When junior Julia Ralston was scrolling through her Instagram feed a while ago, one specific post caught her eye. Someone had replaced the typical faces on the Hasbro game “Guess Who?” board with pictures of their friends. Ralston wanted to do something similar with her friends, and she eventually decided that the size of the yearbook staff made it the best group to do it with.
With this in mind, Ralston went about the process of creating the game. She, along with junior photographers Pallavi Komma and Sabrina Nguyen and senior photo head Mayumi Tabungar, have been trying to collect photos of the entire staff.
“We’re really excited about it,” Nguyen said. “We’re trying to find really wacky or funny or embarrassing pictures of everyone in yearbook so that we can cut them out and use them as part of the game. And it’s been kind of fun to ask everyone in yearbook ‘Oh do you have anything funny of your friend?’ It’s hilarious.”
When Ralston was younger, she would play “Guess Who?” with her father and brother, and she has fond memories of the time spent together. In addition, Komma’s love for the game went so far as to cause her to buy, in her words, the most “extra” version of the game she could find.
“It’s so intense. There’s a light up part of it,” Komma said. “It’s like a book, it folds out. It’s really intense, but I haven’t played in a while.”
For Komma, she thinks that the closeness of the El Valedor staff will contribute to how enjoyable the game is. They already share lots of pictures with each other, and this is just another way to highlight the bond that they have.
“In general, [the yearbook class] is pretty close and we have a lot of weird moments and weird pictures that we have from Snapchat,” Komma said. “It’s kind of a nice way to collect all of that together in a fun, cute game.”
They hope this isn’t a game that only has one-time use. Their goal is for it to be something that can be played multiple times, by a variety people.
“I wanted this to be something that we could maybe leave in the room and people could just play whenever they wanted,” Ralston said. “Maybe next year they could trade out some of the cards for new people … I guess it could be an ongoing thing.”
To which Komma responded, “Yeah, like a tradition.”
