Most card games are about winning. Go Wish is about something quieter: helping people say what matters to them when they are seriously ill or thinking ahead. It uses a deck of cards, each naming something people often want near the end of life, and it turns a hard conversation into something you can hold in your hands.
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What go wish is
Go Wish is a deck of 36 cards, according to the materials I found, and each card carries a short statement such as being kept clean, having someone to talk to, or being at peace. Players sort the cards by how important each one is to them. There is also a wild card for a wish the deck does not cover. The game was developed by the Coda Alliance, a US non-profit working on advance care planning, as described on its own site at the Coda Alliance website.
The idea is that people who struggle to answer a blunt question like “what do you want at the end?” often find it easier to respond to a concrete prompt. Picking up a card that says “to have my family with me” and placing it in a pile feels smaller than composing an answer from scratch. That makes go wish useful to families, nurses, social workers and chaplains.
How a session works
A typical session is short and quiet. The person playing sorts the cards into groups: very important, somewhat important and not important. They may then pick the few that matter most and talk about why. The role of the listener, whether a relative or a professional, is to ask gentle follow-up questions and not to steer the answers.
Toolkits used in community and health settings describe the game as playable by one person alone, with a partner or in a group. Playing alone can be a good way to clarify your own thinking before a family talk. Playing together shows people where their wishes overlap and where they differ, which can prevent painful guesswork later.
Why a game helps with hard talks
Conversations about illness and death are avoided in many families, often out of love: nobody wants to upset anyone. The result is that relatives are sometimes left guessing what a loved one would have wanted, at the worst possible moment. Tools such as go wish give people a structure and a reason to start earlier, when there is time to think.
The game does not replace legal or medical documents. It helps you discover what you value, and that can then be written down in an advance directive or shared with a doctor. Think of it as the step before the paperwork. Rules for advance directives differ by country and region, so a legal or medical professional should confirm what applies to you.
Using go wish at home
If you want to try it with someone you care about, a few practical tips help. Choose a calm time and place, not a hospital corridor or a family holiday. Say clearly that you are not predicting anything, only learning what matters. Let silence happen. Accept answers that surprise you, and resist the urge to argue with a priority that seems odd.
Write down what you hear, with the person’s permission, and offer to share it with relatives or their doctor. Plan to revisit it, because wishes change as health and circumstances change. A single session is a start, not a final statement.
A note on trust and sources
When searching for tools like this, be careful about copies and look-alike products. Check that you are using materials from the organisation that created them or a trusted health provider. Online health information varies a lot in quality, and we have written about how to question big claims in how to judge a health startup’s longevity claims. The same sceptical habits apply to any resource about care.
If you want a gentler way to think about your own preferences before sharing them, a visual exercise can help. Our piece on how to build a mood board that actually guides you shows how sorting images and words can clarify priorities, an approach not far from what go wish does with cards.
Ways professionals use go wish
Beyond families, go wish appears in community workshops, hospice and palliative programs and training for health staff. A nurse might use the cards to learn what a new patient values; a chaplain might use them to open a spiritual conversation; a community educator might run a group session so neighbours can practise the language of care planning.
Because the cards use plain wording, they work across education levels, and because they are physical, they give nervous hands something to do. That is a modest design choice with a big effect on whether people take part. If you work in a caring role, ask your organisation whether it already has a deck before buying one.
The takeaway
Go wish is not a game you win. It is a way of starting a conversation people often put off, using 36 simple prompts. If someone in your life is ill, ageing, or simply willing to talk about it, a deck of cards may be a kinder opening than a direct question. Learn more from the Coda Alliance, and speak to a health or legal professional about formal plans.
