← Loud Room

Icebreaker games for a remote team

Ten to fifteen minutes, on the phones people already have, with nothing for IT to approve.

The problem with most team games is the overhead: an account each, a licence, a download, and a facilitator reading instructions while eleven people wait. By the time that is finished the half hour is gone.

These need a web address and four letters. Nobody signs up and nobody installs anything. Names and photos stay on the phones that entered them, and the room itself lives in memory and is never written to disk. A round takes about as long as the waiting usually does.

They are built to be played by people who have never met in person, which is the normal case for a distributed team. Nothing depends on shared history or on being in the same country.

Which of the four to pick

Setting it up

  1. Put fifteen minutes at the front of a call you are already having.
  2. Whoever is running it opens loudroom.games and taps Start a new room.
  3. They paste the four-letter code into the chat. Everyone joins on their phone.
  4. Play one game. Stop there — the second one is where it starts feeling like an away day.
Start a game

Questions

Do people need to create accounts?
No. There are no accounts and no sign-in. A name and a four-letter code is the whole setup.
Is it free?
Yes, and there is no per-seat pricing to work out, because there are no seats.
How long does it take?
One game runs about ten to fifteen minutes with a typical team. You can stop after any round.
Does anything need installing or approving?
No. It is a web page. Nothing is installed on a work laptop, and people play on their own phones.
What size team does it suit?
Three to twelve on one call. A bigger all-hands is better split into a few rooms running at once.

Also