Party game - picture telephone

A few years ago, I learned an untitled party game from a friend's friend who was visiting DC. In any case, the exact source is lost on me but the game continues. I've showed it to friends and family of all pages and every time received rave reviews. The mechanics is a bit like "draw something", that mobile game which was really popular. and a bit like "telephone", where a "secret" message is passed from person to person, until it turns into something totally different from original. I looked it  up online and the game seems to have various names: telephone pictionary, paper telephone, telestrations, visual telephone, etc. I'm just going to call it picture telephone. 

Since not everyone seems to know this game, I thought I'd at least write down the rules and attach an example of a recent gameplay. Hope you find the directions simple to follow and enjoy it at your next group gathering!

Setup

Most party games require some kind of board game or video game setup. For this game, you just need a small group of people (4 is a good number, but more merrier) and paper/pens/pencils for writing and drawing. I find it easier to number the pages just to keep it orderly in case people shuffle their papers out of order as the game progresses. 

Determine how many pieces of paper to pass out to each player. If you have 4 people, 4 piece would be fine. If you have 10 people, you can do up to 10 or fewer. (once you read the rest of instructions, you'll see why). 

Game Play

Everyone writes a phrase on paper #1. It can be a proverb, a motto, song lyric, movie quote, cards against humanity selection, inside joke, or whatever other thing that is on your mind. 

As soon as everyone is done with the phrase, pass the entire stack of papers to next player. You can figure out if you want to do clock wise or counter-clock-wise. 

Next player looks at the phrase, puts #1 on the bottom of the stack, then draws that phrase on paper #2. After everyone is done drawing, pass entire stack of paper to next player.

Third player looks at drawing, puts #2 on bottom of stack, then writes what he/she thinks the drawing is supposed to be (remember, at this point, the player has only seen the drawing and has no idea what the original text on #1 was). After everyone is done writing/guessing, pass entire stack of paper to next player.

Basically the game switches between text mode and drawing mode and at the end, the entire stack is returned to the original player and people can share what the original phrase has transformed into! Some people who claim to be "bad artists" are actually better at drawing/expressing the idea than trained artists. If you cannot guess what the drawing is, make it up. The funnier the better!

Sample game

Pics of a recent game I had (seven people in group) where the original phrase is "ice skating in Central Park". this one ended up being fairly close to the original but still nice to see the drawings. Some other phrases in the group had turned into very funny drawings/text later on. 

Misc

A friend suggested that index card sized post-it-notes would work as well. I've also seen a version online where you use a large sheet of paper and just fold it down as you pass it to next person.

IndieCadeEast 2013–Games and Creativity

While I’ve played my share of video games growing up, I didn’t know much about independent games or game development before I attended IndieCadeEast 2013. Thanks to Diana, we made our way to the Museum of Moving Image in Queens this past weekend to the first IndieCade on the east coast. After two and a half days of intense convention activities, I learned a thing or two about games, crowd energy, creative design, and play testing. Warning: this entry has a lot of media. Proceed with caution.

fancy logo. Link to Indiecade East site

just a shot of the museum entrance.

Five Memorable Convention Moments (more details after the jump)

1. Renga AI: "Your fourth harvester looks really useful now”
2. Game Design Workshop: Post-It Pirates playtest sessions
3. Hokra Play-by-Play Sports Commentary during Sports Friends Session
4. Super Shove Shove Ending Screen during CAPY keynote by Kris.
5. Three way tie for the three “Well-Played” sessions I attended. All the presenters gave engaging presentations and shed some light onto games that I had not otherwise known about.

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1. Renga Rant

http://wallfour.co.uk/
When D. and I first lined up on Sat. night for this game in the main theater (bigger of the two theaters), we didn’t know what to expect. The volunteer who was handing out the laser pointers instructed every row to pass down the laser pointers (1 per 3 people only). Since we sat on the aisle, I decided to skip it and let my neighbor participate while we observed. Later on in the show, he was nice enough to let us try as well.

Game premise: Team space shooter
The Execution: 100-players (total strangers) + laser pointers (aka annoying red things) = crowd ecstasy and/or complete chaos.
The Twist: We are all dependent on each other to build a ship, fight off enemies, and survive!
Side effect: Continuous blabbering about how cool this game is and seeing “quads” and “radial” shapes every where.

The context for the AI comment "Your fourth harvester looks really useful now” came after we opted to built yet another harvester despite being blown to bits by enemies. The ship can build different parts after each round of attacks. A “launch” engine is said to be the primary goal because the ship needs to build four launch engines in order to go home. Then there are “silo” ship units to hold supplies and “harvesters” which are little ships that can grab supplies to bring back to the silos. Harvesters have no offense so they get destroyed easily during attack.

Pirates Mad Libs

Some people love crosswords. Others prefer word searches. Words with Friends (and Scrabble) as well as Boggle offer yet more ways to play with words. While my friends on Words know I’m not the best player to come up with long words or to take advantage of triple word/triple letter spaces, I still enjoy the social aspects of the game. Another word game that is not as popular as the above is “mad libs”. Perhaps this is the next social app idea? One friend can make up a story, leave blanks for the other friend to fill out? and both can read the story afterwards? (update: just looked up the app store, there exists such apps already)

While chilling out in Penn station the other day, I browsed through Penn Books' collection and found a book and a series of themed Mad Libs. The pirates one looked funny so I decided to try it out with J. It proved to be quite a fun activity together. I will post the results from time to time on my blog so you can share the joy and laughter.

How to throw a pirate party
If you are looking for a fuzzy way to celebrate your next birthday, how about a pirate-themed costume party? Start by sending invitations in the form of a buried panda map with an X marking the location of your sea panda. Make a sign for the front door that reads: “Ahoy, fuzz balls” and fill the house with lots of adorkable booty—Mom’s silk bamboo trees, satin lettuce, and snuggly costume jewelry for starters. As your guests come abroad, tie a bandanna around their alligators and place place an acrobatic patch over their paws, and give them fake tattoos for their arms and teeth. And remember, when the cake is presented, sing a rousing version of “Happy Birthday” using your pirate name, like “Happy birthday, dear songbird-face C.!” Then, and only then, may you cut the chocolate sport bike with your delicious sword.