Quick, online group games for non-native English speakers
February 11, 2022 8:00 PM Subscribe
My office has a virtual "Game hour" every week where we play a group game while logged into Zoom. The games are very word-heavy - Codenames, Skribbl.io, and the like, requiring correct spelling and/or knowledge of American slang. This leaves some non-native English speakers of the team out. Are there online group games accessible to people of varying English levels? Wrinkle: It shouldn't need an account/sign-up, so Boardgamearena is out.
The game hour lasts - ahem - an hour, and people come in and out during the hour, so ideally there would be two rounds of ~25 min.
Anything with extensive rules or a learning curve is out.
There could be as few as 5 and as many as 15 players.
People shouldn't need to sign up for an account or have to create a username/password.
It's ok if it costs some money for one person to buy/subscribe to it as long as the others don't have to sign in.
Thanks!
The game hour lasts - ahem - an hour, and people come in and out during the hour, so ideally there would be two rounds of ~25 min.
Anything with extensive rules or a learning curve is out.
There could be as few as 5 and as many as 15 players.
People shouldn't need to sign up for an account or have to create a username/password.
It's ok if it costs some money for one person to buy/subscribe to it as long as the others don't have to sign in.
Thanks!
I've managed to explain werewolf/mafia in eastern Europe and latin america. Many people are often already familiar with some variant if the game.
posted by jander03 at 8:09 PM on February 11, 2022
posted by jander03 at 8:09 PM on February 11, 2022
+1 to Broken Picturephone (we used this implementation). It combines Telephone and Pictography and was a big hit with a team of mixed English ability. Everyone picks a word, and that word gets passed on to another player who then has to draw a corresponding picture, which then gets passed on to the next player to describe in a single word etc.
posted by matildatakesovertheworld at 8:39 PM on February 11, 2022
posted by matildatakesovertheworld at 8:39 PM on February 11, 2022
I ran a weekly gaming session with my previous two teams; the most popular options were Gartic Phone (guess the picture being drawn) and any of the Jackbox games - I bought a bunch of the Jackbox party packs and would let the team choose. Some of their games also let you disable US-centric words/phrases.
posted by okayokayigive at 5:02 AM on February 12, 2022
posted by okayokayigive at 5:02 AM on February 12, 2022
Wavelength was just released and is a lot of fun. Everyone needs to use phone apps but it's good. It is word reliant though.
posted by bbqturtle at 7:18 AM on February 12, 2022
posted by bbqturtle at 7:18 AM on February 12, 2022
I don't suppose you would have everybody play "Mystery Singer" as a Zoom game?
Everybody sign in with a pseudonym and camera off, and everybody sing for 1 minute. Then everybody vote for their favorite using the poll feature. Whoever wins at the end... Audience has to guess who the co-worker is.
posted by kschang at 7:33 AM on February 12, 2022
Everybody sign in with a pseudonym and camera off, and everybody sing for 1 minute. Then everybody vote for their favorite using the poll feature. Whoever wins at the end... Audience has to guess who the co-worker is.
posted by kschang at 7:33 AM on February 12, 2022
I was recently introduced to boom party on around.co.
Around is video conference tool but we don’t use it for that.
I liked it so much I roped my partner into playing with me last night because it won’t let me play alone.
posted by bilabial at 10:21 AM on February 12, 2022
Around is video conference tool but we don’t use it for that.
I liked it so much I roped my partner into playing with me last night because it won’t let me play alone.
posted by bilabial at 10:21 AM on February 12, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by kbuxton at 8:07 PM on February 11, 2022 [1 favorite]