Gartic Phone

Gartic Phone takes the old party game known as telephone/Chinese whispers and adds a second dimension — drawing. A round starts when one player writes a short sentence, the next player draws it as best they can, a third tries to describe the drawing in words again without having seen the original sentence, and the chain keeps alternating like this until it loops back to the first player. The result is almost always comically far from the original idea, and revealing the whole chain at the end of the round is the main source of fun — players watch together as a simple sentence gradually falls apart into an absurd picture story.

The game was made as a web-based version needing no installation, so a room can be set up in moments and friends invited via a shared link, similar to other browser party games. The drawing controls are simple, manageable even for a complete amateur with a mouse or a finger on a touchscreen, and the game never punishes weak drawing skills — quite the opposite, the clumsier the result, the bigger the shared laugh at the reveal. Gartic Phone thus works more as social glue than as a game with a clear winner, even though scoring and leaderboards do exist.

The game's popularity was significantly boosted by the rise of streaming and short-video production, where the absurd chains from individual rounds became a popular source of content. Thanks to this, Gartic Phone spread far beyond the circle of people who first played it just with friends, and it became a regular part of content even for creators who otherwise don't play any other games.

Why play: A great choice for remote group fun, where the laughter comes from shared embarrassing moments, not from winning itself.