Skribbl IO

A drawing and guessing game for a group, played in a browser with a link and no accounts. One player draws a given word while everybody else types guesses, points go to the fast guessers and to the drawer, and then the turn passes — which is a format old enough to be furniture and one that works because people are funny when rushed. The scoring is what shapes it. Because guessers are rewarded for speed, the best drawings are not the most accomplished but the most immediately recognisable, and skilled artists frequently score worse than people who draw one obvious feature and stop. That is a genuinely interesting constraint to play under, and it means nobody is excluded for not being able to draw. Lobbies are private or public, rounds are short, and a session is however long the group stays. It works best with four to ten players and with people who know each other, since the chat is half the entertainment. It plays on a phone, though drawing with a mouse or stylus is considerably easier, and it runs on anything. Still the clearest example of the format.