Quick team games for work that people don't secretly hate
Short team games for the office or a video call. Five-minute warm-ups, icebreakers that don't force anyone to perform, and games for the whole team.
Let’s be honest about team games at work: most people dread them. The trust fall, the forced “fun fact about yourself”, the game that eats forty minutes of a one-hour meeting. Nobody asked for that.
The good ones have three things in common. They’re short. Nobody has to perform alone in front of their manager. And they work just as well in one room as on a call spread across four time zones.
Here’s what we’d use.
Five-minute warm-ups before a meeting
Something quick to get cameras on and people talking.
Closest Wins. A trivia question with a number for an answer comes up, everyone types a guess on their phone, and the closest one wins. It suits work well because nobody actually needs to know the answer, so the new hire and the CTO start level. Two or three questions is plenty.
One-word check-in. No app needed. Everyone describes their week in one word and you go round quickly. No follow-up questions, unless the word is “chaotic”.
Price Check. Guess what a real product costs from its photo, brand and reviews. Oddly good fun with sales and finance teams, who tend to think they know prices.
Icebreakers for teams that are still getting to know each other
New starters, two teams that just merged, a cross-department workshop.
How Well Do You Know Me? works here if you keep it light. One person answers a question about themselves, the others guess what they picked. There’s a question pack for coworkers, and you can write your own, so you stay in control of what gets asked. Coffee or tea, early bird or night owl, that kind of thing. Let the team lead go first; it sets the tone.
Wavelength is good for teams that need to learn how each other thinks. One person gets a secret spot on a scale, Useless to Essential for example, and gives a short clue. Everyone else tries to land on the same spot. It’s surprisingly revealing, and nobody has to share anything personal.
For the whole team at once
Twenty people on a call is where most games fall apart. The fix is the same as at a party: everyone answers at the same time and nobody waits for their turn.
Closest Wins and Price Check both take up to 20 players in a room. Tier List takes up to 12. Everyone ranks the same category from S to F in secret, and you score for agreeing with the group, which makes “what’s the best biscuit” a surprisingly heated team activity. With more than 20 people, split into two rooms and compare winners at the end.
When you’ve got half an hour
Offsites, team days, the Friday before a holiday. Now you can play something with more weight.
Truth Be Told is cooperative. Each player is a witness who saw part of the same event, and the group has to rebuild what actually happened from everyone’s facts and the evidence that comes in. It’s basically a communication exercise in a detective costume, which makes it a decent fit for a team day. It takes 4 to 10 players, so split bigger teams.
Faker is the one teams ask to play again. Everyone gets the same word except the faker, clues go round, and you vote out whoever seems to be bluffing. Fair warning: it gets loud, and you’ll find out who in the office is a worryingly good liar.
Running it on a video call
The games run in the browser, so a remote team needs no installs and no accounts. The organiser opens a room on play.guezzer.com, pastes the link in the meeting chat, and everyone joins from their phone. Keep the call going for the talking.
A few things that help:
- Ask people to join on their phone rather than a new browser tab. Nobody gets lost behind the screen share.
- Say how long it’ll take before you start (“three rounds, then back to the agenda”). People relax when they know it ends.
- Don’t make it mandatory. The ones who sit out the first time usually join the second.
What to avoid
Games that single people out. Anything with forfeits. Personal questions you wouldn’t ask in a one-to-one. And anything that needs ten minutes of rules. If you can’t explain it while the last people are still joining, skip it.
