Games to play with coworkers (that aren't team building)
Easy games for lunch breaks, Friday afternoons, office parties and remote coworkers. Nothing compulsory, nothing awkward, and most take about ten minutes.
There’s a difference between team building and just playing a game with the people you work with. Team building gets put in the calendar by someone in HR. A game with coworkers happens because it’s 4pm on a Friday and nobody is getting anything else done.
This post is about the second kind. If you need something structured for a meeting or an offsite, we’ve covered quick team games for work separately.
On a lunch break
You’ve got twenty minutes, and half of that went on the queue for food. Pick something you can play with one hand.
Higher or Lower is perfect for this. Which artist has more monthly listeners on Spotify, which song has more streams? It takes 2 to 8 players and settles the music arguments that have been going on near the coffee machine for months.
Closest Wins is the other easy one. Trivia questions with a number for an answer, closest guess wins. Nobody needs to be good at trivia, which is exactly why it works between departments.
Friday afternoon
The week is basically over. People are a bit giddy. This is when Faker earns its place. Everyone gets the same secret word except the faker, clues go round, and you vote. Try the Undercover mode at least once: the faker gets a similar word and doesn’t even know they’re the odd one out, which leads to some very confident wrong clues.
Tier List is good for this slot too. Everyone ranks the same category from S to F in secret, and the reveal shows which item split the room the most. You’ll learn things about your colleagues’ taste in food that you can’t unlearn.
At the office party
Bigger crowd, people from other floors, maybe a drink or two. You want games where everyone plays at once and nobody has to stand up and perform.
Price Check and Closest Wins both take up to 20 players, so the whole party can be in one room. Doodle Gallery takes up to 12 and is where most of the laughing happens. Drawings appear anonymously, so the most serious person in the company can draw something truly awful with no consequences. Then the artists are revealed.
With remote coworkers
Same games, one link. Open a room on play.guezzer.com, drop the link in Slack or Teams, and people join from their phones. Nothing to install on a work laptop, which your IT team will appreciate.
How Well Do You Know Me? is especially good for remote teams, because remote coworkers usually know each other’s work and very little else. It has a question pack for coworkers, and everyone can add questions of their own before the game starts. One person sits in the hot seat and answers; the rest guess.
Wavelength is a calmer choice for a team that’s spread out. One person gets a secret spot on a scale and gives a short clue, everyone else turns their own dial. It’s quiet enough for an open-plan office and still gets people talking.
When someone new joins
Be careful with icebreakers here. Putting the new person in the hot seat on day two isn’t kind, however well meant.
Flip it instead: let the team take turns in the hot seat in How Well Do You Know Me?, and let the new person guess along. They learn who’s who, and they get to score points off people who have been there for years. Closest Wins is the other safe pick, since a new starter is as likely to win as anyone.
A few ground rules
- Keep it optional. Somebody always wants to watch the first round before joining in.
- No forfeits, no losers buying the coffee. It’s a game, not a performance review.
- Steer clear of questions about money, politics or anyone’s love life. Write your own questions if the packs don’t fit your office.
- Keep it short. Two or three rounds and back to work, and people will want to do it again next Friday.
