How to run a word game at an office party
Why a word game works with colleagues
Office parties have a familiar problem: people stand in the same small circles they sit in all year. A word-guessing game for two teams breaks those circles gently. Nobody has to perform alone for long, the rules take a minute to explain, and the most junior person in the room can be the star of a round.
It also needs almost no equipment. Everyone already has a phone, the game runs in the browser, and there is nothing to install on a locked-down work laptop. One person creates a room and the rest join in seconds.
Prepare in ten minutes
Decide who will host before the party. The host creates the room, sets the round length and names the teams, so it should be someone comfortable speaking to the group, not necessarily the most senior person. Open the room a few minutes early and test it on your own phone.
Pick a round length to fit the evening. With 60-second rounds a full game for ten players is short enough to play twice; 90 seconds is more relaxed if the room is noisy and people need to repeat themselves. A game of ten players means everyone describes twice, so plan for roughly twenty turns plus a little time between them.
Getting everyone in
The quickest way to fill the room is the QR code. Put it on the big screen or hold up your phone, and people scan it with their camera; no typing a link at a bar table. For a remote or hybrid team, drop the link into your team chat or send it with the Telegram, Viber or WhatsApp buttons.
Say It fits up to ten players in two teams of five. If more people want to play, run two rooms side by side with a host each, or swap players between games so everyone gets a turn. Someone who arrives after the start can join as a spectator and pick a team from the next turn.
Choosing fair teams
Avoid splitting by department; that turns a party game into a rivalry about who works harder. Mix teams on purpose: put people from different floors together, separate managers from their direct reports, and spread the obvious talkers between both sides.
Fun team names help more than you would think. The host can rename the teams in the lobby, so let each team choose its own name in thirty seconds. It is the first thing they do together, and it makes the scoreboard much more fun to read out.
Words that are fun and safe for work
The best office words are the ones only your company understands: the name of the coffee machine, the project everyone remembers, the phrase the CEO uses in every all-hands. Ask people to add a few such words in the lobby; this is exactly what Say It is built around, and it is what makes the game feel like yours.
Set a simple boundary before anyone types: nothing that would embarrass a colleague who is in the room or not in the room, nothing about salaries, reviews or layoffs. Agree that anyone who spots an unsuitable word in the lobby can quietly ask for it to be removed before the game starts. Signed-in players can also add the ready-made Office pack, which is a good backbone if people are shy about writing their own words.
Mix in part of the built-in deck of everyday words so the game never depends only on in-jokes. New joiners, who do not know the internal references yet, will then still have plenty of words they can guess and describe.
Hosting on the night
Before the first round, explain three things: you cannot say the word or part of it, Correct gives a point and Skip takes one away, and when time runs out the current word is the last one. That is enough; everything else people pick up by watching the first turn.
Keep an eye on the energy. If a round drags, shorten the next game; if people are laughing over every skipped word, the round results screen is a great moment to read a few of them aloud. Do not let one loud player take over the describing: turns rotate automatically, so everyone gets their two goes.
Including quieter colleagues
Not everyone enjoys being the centre of attention. Remind the room that skipping is fine and that describing with one word at a time is a perfectly good strategy. Teammates who are guessing can help by being patient instead of shouting over the describer.
Captains mode is another good option for mixed groups. Each team’s captain writes the words the other team will describe, and the first player to join a team becomes its captain, so let a more reserved person join first — quieter people often enjoy the captain role: it is creative, quiet and still central to how the game goes.
Does everyone need an account to play?
No. Players join with just a name from their own phone. An account is only needed to add the ready-made packs or to save your own word pack for the next party, so it makes sense for the host to have one.
How long does one game take?
Every player describes twice. With ten players and 60-second rounds, the describing itself takes about twenty minutes, and a whole game with breaks between turns usually fits in half an hour. With fewer players or shorter rounds it is quicker.
Can we reuse our office words next time?
Yes. At the end of a game a signed-in player can save the words that were typed in as a word pack and add it to the next room in one step. Play again also keeps the teams and words if you want an immediate rematch.