Virtual Team Trivia
Create some friendly competition using tricky trivia questions. First, choose a host to run the game. Then, divide the rest of the group into two or more teams, and start the game! From there, the host will ask a series of trivia questions, and the teams must try to answer as quickly as possible. The first team to answer a question correctly gets the point, and the team with the most points at the end wins! Try questions like: Which planet has the most moons? (Saturn) Who is the author of Jurassic Park? (Michael Crichton) What month was Julius Caesar killed in? (March) What is your body’s largest organ? (Skin) What’s the first astrological sign in the zodiac? (Aries)
Murder Mystery
Challenge your team to solve a classic “Whodunnit?” mystery. Virtual murder mysteries are super-fun puzzles that the whole team can try to solve. Simply pick a virtual murder mystery game to play with your coworkers and spend the game analyzing clues to try and figure out who the murderer is. Anyone who correctly guesses the murderer wins the game. You can find games below: Night of Mystery WHOdunnit Ghost Ship Murder Mysteries Just be sure all materials are distributed beforehand if your murder mystery of choice comes with anything! And, if the mystery uses an app, make sure everyone has it downloaded when you start.
Up Close and Personal
Test your team’s ability to recognize everyday items. This game is simple: find a picture of a common object (or creature). You can either find a photo that is already zoomed in or zoom in on the photo yourself and make a note of what that object is. Then, show the zoomed photos to your coworkers and see how many of them can correctly identify the item in the photo.
Scavenger Hunt
Challenge coworkers to scour their homes for meaningful items. Since you can’t really hide things and ask your team to find them for a virtual game, instead, create a “personal meaning” scavenger hunt. Challenge coworkers to search around their house for items that hold a specific kind of value to them and see who can find everything first. Then, go around and let everybody explain their picks! For example, you could ask for: An item that triggers their happiest memories. An item given to them by their favorite person. An item that makes them feel accomplished or capable.
Bingo
Bingo keeps team members engaged while other things are going on. At the beginning of the happy hour, have everyone fill out a blank bingo card with different common conference call prompts. Then, they can spend the rest of the happy hour keeping an eye out for those prompts and cross out the corresponding box on their bingo sheet when they see something. The first person to call “Bingo” wins! Prompts might include: “Sorry, I was muted.” “Can everyone see my screen?” Someone’s pet appears in the background. You take a drink at the same time as another coworker. Host uses breakout rooms.
Lights, Camera, Action!
Host a mini Oscars ceremony to celebrate your coworkers’ acting chops! This is the perfect game for movie buffs. Start by having everyone act out a scene from their favorite movie or TV show; you can make this a solo challenge or turn it into a team effort and give roles to a small group to play out a scene. Then, in the end, host an awards ceremony (like a mini Oscars night) and decide who the best actors were.
Name That Song
Get to know your coworkers’ musical tastes with Name That Song. Simply choose a few lyrics from your favorite song and have each of your coworkers do the same. Then, take turns reciting your chosen lyrics while everyone else tries to guess what song it is. Whoever guesses the most songs correctly wins the game! There are other ways to give out song clues for this game. For example, instead of lyric snippets, you could have everyone spell out the name of their song using only emojis and have everyone make guesses based on that. Want to make this game super memorable? Make a playlist containing everyone’s picks and share it after the happy hour event.
Noisy Charades
Use words and sounds to help players guess the mystery phrase. In regular Charades, players must act out a mystery phrase while other players guess what it is. To make the game work for a virtual happy hour, play “noisy” Charades, where you can only use words and sounds (not movements and actions) to clue other players in. However, you still can’t say the word that they need to guess or any adjacent terms. For example, if your mystery phrase was “making a pizza,” you’d have to describe that process—and you probably wouldn’t be allowed to use words like “tomato sauce” or “mozzarella.”
Most Likely To
Debate which coworkers are most likely to do all kinds of things. This is another simple game; all you need is a host and a list of “Most Likely To” questions. The host must ask the group each question, and then you can debate and vote on who would be most likely to do whatever action is described in the question. It’s a great way to find out what everyone thinks of each other! Question examples include: Who is most likely to break a world record? Who is most likely to have a million-dollar idea? Who is most likely to survive a zombie apocalypse? Who is most likely to forget their own birthday?
Compliment Train
Lift your coworkers’ spirits by exchanging thoughtful compliments. The whole point of Compliment Train is to make sure that everyone in the group gets a compliment, and you and you can play as many rounds as you like. Simply start with one person; they must pay someone a compliment, then that new person must do the same, and so on. For example: “You’re so creative! I love the way you think outside the box on every project.” “You have such a gift for dealing with people. Every one of our clients loves you!” “You’re such a great problem-solver—I always look to you when I need suggestions.” This is a great way to help your coworkers show appreciation for one another and work together well in the future.
Where I’m From
Talk about your hometown and get to know one another better. In this easy happy hour game, all you and your coworkers have to do is think of 3 notable or quirky details about the town or area where you grew up. Then, go around the group and take turns sharing them without saying where you’re from. The rest of the group can take turns guessing, and whoever guesses correctly first gets the point. Say you’re from San Francisco. Your clues could be, “There are hundreds of small, unseen earthquakes there every year. Modern fortune cookies were invented there, and the poet Robert Frost was born there. Where am I from?”
Sneak It In
See how well you can slip a mystery word into everyday conversion. First, you’ll get assigned a secret word—like “broccoli” or “crash.” Don’t tell anyone else about the word; instead, try to work it into a conversation as many times as possible without giving away what it is. For every successful mention, you get a point, and the person with the most points at the end wins. If anyone else guesses what your word is, you lose all the points you’ve gathered so far. If you like team games, you can turn this into a game where teams can strategize about how to work their word into a conversation.
Majority/Minority
Compare your preferences to your coworkers’ in this simple game. Choose a host for the game. That person must start the game by asking a simple “this or that”-style question—like “morning or night” or “guacamole or salsa?” Everyone must answer, and then, whichever group is in the minority (meaning fewer people answered that option) must take a drink. Other questions could include: Netflix or Hulu? Coffee or tea? Fiction or nonfiction? Board games or video games? If the results of a “this or that” question are even, everyone must drink.
Ocean’s 5 (Or So)
Challenge your team to create their own daring heist! Are you a fan of heist flicks like Ocean’s 11? Divide your coworkers into breakout rooms with about 5 people in each. The teams must develop an idea for an ambitious heist, including a high-profile target and a plan for how to rob that target. After a while, bring everyone back! Each team must go over its plan, and the one with the best idea wins. How you judge the “best” idea can be totally subjective. You might tell the teams you’re looking for the most ambitious idea, for example, or the most absolutely ridiculous (but fun) idea. Or, you could give each team a prize according to what they did best—the most ridiculous idea, the most ambitious idea, the idea most likely to actually work, and so on.
Lip Reading
Test your coworkers’ lip reading skills by cutting the audio periodically. It can be kind of funny when someone’s microphone cuts out (or they forget to turn it on), and they keep talking anyway—but how well can your coworkers keep up without audio? Every 15 minutes or so, mute someone’s audio. Then, let that person keep talking while everyone else tries to read their lips and guess what they’re saying. Keep the muted person in the loop by saying a code word like “banana” or “jenga” before you mute them (or by typing a code word into the group chat). That way, they’ll know the muting is intentional and keep talking.
Movie Watch Party
Gather the team so you can all watch a favorite movie together. First, choose a movie you can easily access on streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, or Disney+. If you like, you can vote between a few movies to ensure most of your coworkers enjoy what they're watching. Then, give everyone a link to the shared movie and watch it remotely. Plus, keep the group chat on so you can keep interacting as the movie plays! Depending on the streaming platform you use, it might be possible for one participant to share their screen and audio with the rest of the team so nobody else has to stream the movie. You can also easily turn the movie watch party into a drinking game (or a non-alcoholic drinking game, if you prefer).
Wikipedia Race
Who can navigate the endless pages of Wikipedia the fastest? The rules for “Wikipedia Race” are super simple: to play, choose a Wikipedia page for everyone to start on. Then, pick another page on the site (and tell players what it is). From there, each player must try and navigate from the first Wikipedia page to the second by only clicking on links—and the first person to do it wins! For example, you could tell your players to go to the “Renaissance” page on Wikipedia and then challenge them to see who can navigate from there to the “Meryl Streep” page fastest. Keep in mind that there are absolutely no shortcuts allowed in this game—no typing, navigating backward after landing on a page, or using Control + F to search for a word.
I Spy
Turn your coworkers’ video call backgrounds into “I Spy” clues. The happy hour version of “I Spy” works more or less like the traditional kids’ version of the game! Have each player take turns locating a notable object in somebody else’s video call background (whether you’re using Zoom, Google Meet, or another app), and then give a vaguely descriptive clue beginning with “I spy…” Whoever guesses the object first gets a point. For example, if you see a stuffed animal in one person’s background, you could say, “I spy something fluffy.” If you see a red throw pillow in another background, you could say, “I spy something red.”
Useless Talent Show
Give everyone on your team a chance to show off their silliest talents. Before the happy hour begins, ask each of your coworkers to come up with the goofiest or most “useless” talent they have. Then, take turns during happy hour showing off all your silly talents—and, to keep things interesting, take a vote after to see whose talent was the group’s favorite! Useless talents could include: Making a realistic water droplet sound by flicking your cheek Cracking your knuckles like the star of an action movie Making your ears wiggle by themselves Doing spot-on celebrity impression
GIF Game
Find out which of your coworkers can track down the funniest GIFs. To begin this fast-paced and hilarious game, pick a judge. Have the judge send your group a prompt or category; each player must then send a reaction GIF they think best fits that category. Once all the GIFs are in, the judge must pick their favorite and declare a winner—and that winner is the judge for the next round. Example categories could include: How it feels to trip in front of your crush accidentally. The moment I notice a bug is crawling up my sleeve. Me when my boss tells me to work late at the last minute. That feeling when you snag the last piece of pizza!
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