The design of Love Quest board game is based on several theories and one of them is the Theory of Close Relationships, introduced by John H. Harvey in 1995. According to this theory, close relationships defined as “relationship that has extended over some period of time and involves a mutual understanding of closeness and mutual behavior that is seen by the couple as an indicator of closeness” (Harvey,  Pauwels, 1999: 1). The reason of applying this theory to Love Quest game explains the current concept of close relationships in the world of modern society, where neither convenience marriages, nor one-sided relationships would necessarily mean that couples are in close relationships. In other words, the important part of the presented definition of close relationships is the “interdependence in people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours” (Harvey,  Pauwels, 1999: 1), meaning that if couples are in close relationships their lives tend to be interconnected in various different ways. The research findings by Myers and Diener (1995) showed some significant evidence that couples are happier and healthier, and tend to live together longer if they evaluate their close relationships as satisfying. Therefore, Love Quest game was designed by targeting people who consider themselves being in close relationships with game mechanics that support the concepts of mutual understanding, mutual behavior and interdependence in thoughts and feelings between partners.

Another theoretical approach that was applied as a background reference for the Love Guest design is called Minding Close Relationships by Harvey and Omarzu (1997). According to this theory, the best way for couples to maintain their relationships’ intimacy and closeness is to have a mutual ever lasting pattern of behavior, where each partner is eager to know about the other and allow them to do so in turn.  In addition, the information that couples get to discover about each other must be accepted and appreciated by each partner (Harvey,  Pauwels, 1999: 2). In Love Quest game this theory served as a major guideline for the game content design, particularly, for questions’ design. Questions that were designed in the game are quite intimate and yet fun to answer, meeting the goal of maintaining relationships close by allowing couples to discover new information about each other.

Finally, the Self-Expansion Model of Motivation and Cognition in Close Relationships, introduced by Aron and colleagues was used as a theoretical foundation for the design of Love Quest game (Slatcher, 2010: 5). The findings of this approach empirically proved that couples’ participation in mutual novel and arousing activities lead to the increase of self-reported relationship quality and rapid positive affect. suggests that when two partners start a relationship, they begin to ‘include the other in the self’, meaning that the partner’s beliefs, feelings and identity start being associated with one’s own self, which, in turn, result in expanding the self by including these new aspects of the other partner (Slatcher, 2010: 5). Based on self-expansion model of motivation and cognition, Love Quest was designed to provide couples with a novel and fun type of activity they can engage with when spending time together. The gameplay of Love Quest is intended to have a positive effect on couples’ relationships by enhancing closeness within couples.