With hybrid and remote work gaining popularity among companies, engaging virtual teams has never been more important. Thankfully, keeping remote workers attentive and motivated isn’t hard — in fact, it can be fun! All you need is a creative mind and an internet connection. And the right remote team-building games.
Online games are an entertaining way to remove barriers between remote colleagues and bring virtual teammates together. Choose games that can easily be played from your browser so you don’t have to worry about everyone installing and maintaining the right software.
By incorporating web games into your workers’ schedules, they’ll have the chance to rest their minds, have fun with their coworkers, and recharge for a productive work day. To encourage productivity, a sense of unity, and greater employee satisfaction, make remote team building a core part of your employee engagement strategy.
Why online team-building games are great for virtual groups
Remote work can be lonely. You can’t walk over to your colleague’s desk to ask a question or head over to the break room for a coffee and chat. This lack of spontaneous interaction can make it difficult to build meaningful connections with teammates.
While there are hundreds of tools available to help digital teams plug communication gaps and empower collaboration, one of the best ways to bring them together is virtual team building.
Team-building activities are instrumental in bringing coworkers together: They enable teammates to work together to solve problems and forge long-lasting bonds. Blending work and social time helps remote teams get to know each other better as they engage in lighthearted camaraderie and fun activities.
Whether it’s an icebreaker activity to kickstart employee onboarding or a word game to get the creative juices flowing in a planning session, your remote team will love the online games I’ve collected here.
12 Online team-building games to enhance collaboration
Team building isn’t all trust falls and trivia.
Online games excel at fostering closer ties among remote coworkers. You can stick with traditional options like icebreakers, quizzes, and challenges, or you can add a touch of pizzazz with cooking competitions or detective games.
Including a mix of both traditional and unconventional team-building activities, here are my favorite online games to play for remote team building.
1) Spyfall
Spyfall is a popular online game where players must find the spy within the group. Someone in your department plays an enemy spy who’s infiltrated the group, and it’s up to the other members to use their detective skills to uncover the spy’s identity.
At the start of the game, all players are given the same location card, except for one player who receives a spy card. Team members must try to catch the spy by questioning their teammates on the location. The spy’s job is to deceive everyone else and avoid getting caught. As the game unfolds, team members can guess the spy, or the spy can reveal their identity and guess the location.
This is a fun game that gets team members working together and thinking creatively. The sense of “whodunnit” adds a competitive edge that keeps players on their toes. Even better, you can host Spyfall over Zoom by sharing your invite code with your team — no special install necessary.
2) Codenames
Continuing the spy theme, Codenames is a spy game with a word-guessing twist.
This game can be played virtually by inviting your team to an online session and joining a group video or audio call.
All players are split into two teams led by a nominated Spymaster. The rest of the players are known as field operatives.
Each Spymaster randomly chooses a set of code words. All players can see these words except for the field operatives, who don’t know which code words belong to each team. Spymasters must take turns giving their team one-word clues to help them guess the right code words.
As the game progresses, the field operatives have to race to “reach” their Spymaster before the other team by guessing which code words belong to their team. The first team to identify all their code words correctly while avoiding the enemy team’s words wins.
While Spyfall is fun, I like the layer of complexity Codenames adds to the spy game by encouraging players to think outside the box as they come up with their clues.
3) Gartic Phone
Gartic Phone is a drawing and guessing game that exercises team members’ creativity.
Start a group video call and invite your colleagues to a private session. Gartic Phone offers a few game modes, from the “Normal” rules of taking turns to “Speedrun,” where players race against the clock.
Following the normal rules, each player writes down a silly sentence (the weirder, the better). They then have the chance to draw one of these funny phrases, during which time, everyone else has to guess the sentence. Whoever guesses the most drawings correctly wins the game.
The drawings and guesses become progressively funnier as the game continues, making this a hilarious team-building game that’ll have everyone laughing. Gartic Phone is excellent for warming up your team’s imagination before a creative planning session.
4) Skribbl.io
If you like Pictionary, you’ll enjoy Skribbl.io, another online drawing and guessing game.
Although it has a similar basis to Gartic Phone, Skribbl.io is a simpler version. In it, players take turns drawing a chosen word from a set of word prompts while the other players try to guess the word in real time.
Drawing simple words makes the game faster and forces players to think and react quickly to the pictures in front of them. This is great for testing people’s reaction times and pushing their creative boundaries.
5) Words With Friends
Words With Friends is a popular online crossword puzzle-style game that can be played either online or by downloading the app.
Similar to Scrabble, players take turns creating words on a virtual game board using lettered tiles. Each word’s score is calculated based on the letter values and the word placement.
Although Words With Friends is a two-player game, it can easily be modified for teams by setting up a tournament-style session where the winner of each round advances to the next level.
I love how Words With Friends encourages teams to think both creatively and strategically. As a marketer, I find Words With Friends to be a fun way to challenge marketing teams to leverage their vocabulary and find the highest-scoring word combinations.
6) Scattergories
Scattergories is a fast-paced online game where players take turns coming up with words to fit specific categories before time runs out.
The game ups the ante by randomly choosing a starting letter for players to use. Before beginning, you can select which categories you solve for, and at the end of each round, you score players on their word choices. The first player to complete all categories with unique words wins.
Scattergories encourages players to think quickly, which adds excitement and energy. This game lets players connect over words as they challenge themselves and each other to come up with creative and unique answers.
7) Colonist
If you want your team to think more strategically, consider organizing a Colonist team-building session.
Colonist is a multiplayer strategy game centered around constructing and managing settlements. Each player has to gather resources, build structures, and trade with each other to grow their settlements. The first player to achieve 10 victory points wins the game.
You can adapt Colonist into a team game by having coworkers go head-to-head, work together to build settlements, or play tournament-style.
Colonist encourages team members to share resources to advance their position. They have to work strategically while competing against each other. You can also chat with your teammates during the game to trade resources and stay social.
8) CardzMania
CardzMania is home to more than 50 multiplayer card games. Varying in length from 5 to 30 minutes, these games are great as short team-building activities for daily stand-up meetings or longer team-building sessions.
Virtual teams can play classic card games such as bridge, spades, or solitaire. Choose a multiplayer game, invite friends with your unique URL, and put your card strategy to the test. When inviting people to the game, you also have the option to host a private tournament. The wide variety of card games means you can change what you play and keep things interesting during team building.
CardzMania games are easy to learn and play and require minimal setup or preparation, making them a strong option for team building.
10) GeoGuessr
In GeoGuessr, players have to guess the location of a random Google Street View image. Players can explore the image location to look for clues such as road signs, landmarks, or flora. The closer the guess is to the actual location, the more points they earn.
To play GeoGuessr, simply visit the game’s website, choose between easy, medium, or expert mode, and click “Play.” Invite your teammates to a group video call and share your screen so you can guess the location together. GeoGuessr also offers casual or competitive multiplayer modes where you can invite and challenge your coworkers.
GeoGuessr is one of my favorite games to play with global remote teams; everyone can share their various cultural and geographical knowledge while working together to guess locations.
11) Taboo
The digital version of a classic, Taboo is a verbal word game where two teams go head-to-head.
Teams are made up of clue-givers and guessers. The clue-givers for each team take turns describing the word at the top of the word list without using any of the taboo words listed underneath. If their teammates guess the word, that team gets a point. But, if they say one of the taboo words, they receive a penalty. Spoiler alert: Each team only has 60 seconds to guess the word.
When playing Taboo online, have the clue-giver load the game site so they can see the clue and taboo words. On a group video call, they can describe the word to everyone else without sharing their screen. Taboo lets clue-givers keep a running tally of scores too.
This game puts your coworkers’ creative thinking skills to the test and is an engaging activity to help break the ice for team members.
12) Charades
Almost everyone knows charades, the game where players take turns acting out a word or phrase without speaking. The rest of the team must then try to guess the word within a given time frame. Whoever guesses correctly wins a point.
To play Charades virtually, invite your coworkers to a video call and have everyone turn off their cameras. Use the Charades online generator to generate a new word automatically when it’s your turn. Act out your word to the camera and laugh along as your teammates try to guess what you’re demonstrating.
This classic party game fits well for team building. Teammates work together to guess the word or phrase or compete against each other to be the winning member. Plus, it’s bound to have more than a few people laughing!
Wrapping up — Use remote team-building games to boost cooperation
Remote teams can benefit greatly from playing online games together. From problem-solving games like Codenames to fast-paced word puzzles like Taboo, there are countless options that teams can play in the browser.
Playing games together gives teams a chance to socialize and have fun while improving their collaboration skills, exercising creativity, and boosting team morale. Gain the most from your remote team-building sessions and see how these fun tools build stronger, more engaged teams.
Enjoy trying out these online games and good luck nabbing those high scores in your next virtual team-building session!