Games & activities to facilitate fun remotely
When working remotely, you might miss fun moments with your team. Working remotely does not mean you may not have chit chat or downtime.
Here’s a collection of virtual activities that you can include as icebreakers or at the end of a meeting if there is time left. Or to set up a virtual team event.
Alternatives to video conferencing and break out sessions
More fun “walking around” and chatting in smaller spontaneous groups
- https://www.gather.town/
- https://spatial.chat/
- https://www.weve.co - no walking around but different video meeting concept
Drawing games
- https://skribbl.io/ (like pictionary - draw and guess)
- https://garticphone.com/ (like the telephone game - draw and write)
Secrecy games
Find out who is in your team and who is acting against you. If you can stand some secrecy and telling lies, enjoy either
- Among us - here you find the maps (tip: best select a server in Europe if you are based in Europe because of latency issues)
- or Werewolf
Codenames
Play in two teams against each other:
- Each team selects a spymaster.
- The spymaster sees which word belong to which team and which word is the bomb.
- The spymaster gives hints like “country 3” and writes that in the chat for future reference.
- The team then may guess up to 3 words that they associate with “country”, e.g. “UK”, “state”, “map”.
- If they guess a wrong word, it’s the other team’s turn. If they guess the bomb word, the game is over and they lost.
-
The team that guesses all their words first, wins.
- https://codenames.game/
- https://horsepaste.com/
Colonist, i.e. Catan
Play against each other:
Hollywood hangman
Guess movie names!
https://www.hollywoodhangman.com/
Rules:
- someone shares the screen, types the letters for everyone and takes notes on the points
- take turns, e.g. by first name in alphabetical order
- if it’s your turn, guess a letter
- if you guessed the letter correctly, you get one point and may guess the next letter until you guessed wrongly, then it’s the next person’s turn
- whenever someone knows the complete movie name, they may shout it out loud (turn your mics on everyone)
- if they guessed the movie correctly, they get two points and afterwards the person whose turn it was continues (keep the order of taking turns)
- when there’s “Game Over”, count the points and announce the winner! 🎉
Facilitated chat
- Use https://burble.buzz/ for fun questions - get one, let someone answer and chose the next person, repeat!
- Icebreaker questions with https://icebreakers.equalexperts.com/
- more serious retrospective checkins with https://tscheck.in/
Escape games
- https://escape-the-boom.com/
- facilitated escape game events
“A am a tree” improvisation game
A person starts representing something, poses like it, says e.g. “I am a tree” stays in the pose and the next person chimes in, e.g. “I am an apple”, then the next “I am the worm”.
After three images, the first person resolves the chain and choses “I keep the apple (or worm)”. Then the person who got chosen starts again stating “I am an apple (or a worm) and repeating the image, starting a new chain of associative images.
The poses can also be with movement and especially when you are onsite and use the full room running around representing something it’s even more fun!
“Lead the movement” improvisation game
Everyone observes everyone. Chose whom you want to imitate: maybe someone scratches their head or raises their cup of coffee.
Stay in the imitation so that the group follows.
Follow another imitation if someone convinces the group to start another movement.
Enjoy inspiring each other to (un)usual movements.
“Simon says” reaction and attention game
One person is giving commands like “Simon says: raise your hand” and also does so. The group needs to do the action but only if the commander said “Simon says” before.
The commander may confuse the group by saying “Raise your hand” and raising it - who does so the same, lost and is the new commander.
You also lose when you don’t react properly to a “Simon says” command.
Another good trick is to say “Simon says raise your hand” and instead shaking your head or not doing anything at all.
Enjoy confusing your peers!
Team building / gaming platforms
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