Game ideas

[Dave Gregg]

Let’s accumulate some ideas for games we can play during video meetings. I gave a few below. Feel free to add more.

[Dave Gregg]

Mad Libs.

Last week one of the guys created a mad lib ahead of time and it was a really fun and really simple way to play a game. If you don’t have anyone creative enough to come up with their own there are websites and apps dedicated to provide mad libs. Just google it.

[Dave Gregg]

Mafia

We are planning on playing mafia tonight. We will use the private chat and group chat features of zoom to assign people their roles and for the relevant characters to communicate with one another secretly.

Here is a link to how to play. There are plenty of other quick tutorials online.

UPDATE AFTER PLAYING:

Timing – It took about an hour (I thought it would take 20 minutes). But we had a lot of fun!

Voting – We also used the “reaction” button in order to put a thumbs up on the people we were voting for. that was way better than verbal voting.

[David Taylor Jr.]

So far, 2733 has done the following:

 

Modified 20 Questions: Someone comes up with a topic and the group asks yes or no questions one by one until someone figures out the answer.

2 Truths and a Lie: We had everyone chat the captain their Name – Lie – Truth – Truth. Then, later in the meeting, these were read out one by one (mixing up the order of truth and lie) and people wrote down on a card two things. 1, what they thought the lie was, and 2, who they thought it was. The person who got the most correct won.

[Anthony Witt]

Hi…We are thrilled to share game ideas and appreciate your ideas.  Battalion 1540 has met virtually for the last 3 weeks in Claremont, California. We have had 15 guys attend our Zoom meetings and 5 leaders. We have done the pledge of alliance, announcements, squad devotions (led by one or two of the boys), games, and council ring. We have been brainstorming game ideas that would work with this number of guys on Zoom.

So far we have done:

Bible Trivia (read cards out loud and boys raised hands to answer).

Scavenger Hunt (screen shared list of 20 items that every home would have but some not readily and first one back with all the items won).

Scattergories (probably best with group smaller than ours).

Riddle (“A man pushed his car”.  You can find it on web.  Leader answered yes and no questions till boys in 3 groups figured it out.  First group to get it won.

Grab one object (leader names one object and first person back with it wins).

For upcoming meetings we are considering:

Pictionary (using the Whiteboard feature on Zoom)

Emoji to Word Telephone (we made this up and haven’t tried it)
This would essentially be like the game of telephone but using the Chat feature in Zoom. One player would start out with a sentence, such as, “my dog ran away last night”. He would chat this to the next person (we’d have a list of the order screen-shared), and the next person would have to translate this into emojis. (??‍♂️???‍♂️➡️?✨) (we’d have to figure out ones that were not too easy or challenging.) Then the next person would have to decipher the emojis back into text, and he would send the text to the next person who would change it into emojis, and so on until we get to the last person, who would say it or chat it to everybody. If you think this would take too long, we could also do it in 2 rooms, and see which room gets it closer to the original.

Who am I? (we made this up and have not tried it).
Prior to the meeting, we would ask the boys to submit 3 things that no one else might know about them.
We will create a list of everyone’s 3 things, and screen-share that list so everyone can see it.
We will also have a list of people screen-shared so everyone knows their options, and we can use that list as an order for guessing. One by one, each kid will get to attempt to match up a list of things with a person. If they get it right, they get a point, and if they don’t, it moves on to the next person.

[Joshua Tallman]

These are some good ideas, guys, thanks for sharing. I’m going to try Tony’s suggestion of Emoji Word Telephone and Who Am I?

At Battalion 8086, we’ve had two online meetings with games:

Last week we tried a snowball throwing contest. The guys took their phones, tablets, or laptops outside and propped them up while trying to pack the ultimate snowball. Then they found a tree 30-50 feet away and let loose. “Contest” was a little bit of a misnomer though, because there wasn’t a judge available to decide who threw the farthest or most accurately. It didn’t really matter though, because the whole point was to add in a little bit of physical action and fun… which it did.

We’ve got some guys who are building a treehouse in their backyard, so one night they showed us the work that they’ve finished and explained what was still coming. It’s not quite a game, per-se, but it sort of accomplished the same purpose for us.

This coming week, I’ve assigned games to one of our older guys (7th grade). I think he is planning to lead an online board game.

[Darin McGrew]

For our online meetings, we’ve used online games:

https://skribbl.io/
Like Pictionary but no teams and everyone plays at once.

https://codenames.plus/ or https://www.horsepaste.com/
Codenames (assumes you have an online chat of some sort for the clues and team discussion).

Other online board/card game options include:

https://dominion.games/
Dominion (a deck-building game)

https://boardgamearena.com/
Various, including Saboteur (but we couldn’t get two brothers who share the same IP address into the same game)

It is also possible to play normal board/card games online, for example:

Incan Gold (a “push your luck” game)
The person with the game announces the new card revealed each turn, and the players declare their intentions each turn by typing either “explore” or “return” into the chat window, and hitting Return simultaneously.

The Captain Is Dead (a fully cooperative game based on your favorite sci-fi show)
The person with the game points a webcam at the board, including each player’s hand (which is public knowledge). Players take turns normally, announcing their actions. The person with the game moves the bits around accordingly.