Virtual Games to Play with Co-workers in 2023

Team building activities are any activities, games, and events geared towards creating stronger bonds between team members. The final objective of team building is creating a cohesive team.

You may be familiar with most of these team-building activities in the office setting—the fun face-to-face outings and outdoor adventure. But in remote teams, what does team building involve? How do you motivate the company’s greatest asset to achieve a sense of togetherness without the face-to-face advantage?

The answer still stands—online team-building activities. With virtual team building, any manager and team lead can still foster the same level of engagement and cohesiveness in a remote team. But since in-office and virtual workplaces vary, team building will look different.

This guide covers:

• Online Games Online
• Virtual Games to Play on Zoom
• Virtual Games to play with friends
• Virtual Zoom Games

List of Virtual Games to Play with Coworkers

Virtual Scavenger Hunt

An online scavenger hunt is the closest you’ll get to a treasure hunt game in an out-of-office setting. The activity offers a great thrill that your teammates can’t resist. They’ll love hunting down for items for the fun of it. To make it more interesting, have the team members look for something beyond the items they can find easily in their kitchens.

The urgency and time limit attached to the virtual scavenger game inspires critical thinking and fast decision-making in a team. The team will love this team-building idea for its excitement, adventure, and quick opportunity to win a prize for the accomplishment.

Find the best Scavenger Hunt team-building activities for your team.

Two Truths and a Lie

The power that this game has in bringing a sense of togetherness in virtual teams is beyond imagination. So simple, yet this game helps team members better understand their peers, their fun facts, and entertaining sto

ries they hardly speak about. The game starts with a team member sharing three statements about themselves—two which are truths and one which is a lie. The others are to tell which are true and which is a lie.

Virtual Trivia

There’s nothing like a few rounds of trivia to get a virtual team engaged. With prizes, this game even becomes better. It not only encourages teamwork but also allows the team members to know more about their colleagues. It allows the team to know their colleagues' interests and why they value what they do. All you need is to prepare and set up a quiz on tools such as Kahoot, and share the link with the team. You’ll then have the players break out in rooms and answer the questions privately.

The next step to get started is to visit Trivia Challenges and select one that fits your team.

Remote Bingo

Almost everyone in your team will love the virtual Bingo game. As a familiar game to most, virtual Bingo will have the team together for some fun. To get started, you’ll need a bingo card. With that, nominate a team member to be the bingo caller, and the first person to mark off all the card numbers wins.

To make the game even more captivating, why not add some prizes like a free lunch, a day off, or a gift card to the picture? You can play remote work Bingo as an in-meeting game to keep the team engaged or as a break before continuing with a long meeting.

Online Happy Hour

A virtual happy hour is one of the best team-building activities in a remote workforce. Similar to their non-virtual counterparts, they include icebreakers, simple games, other Happy Hour ideas, and activities over drinks. The online games played on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Webex makes the happy hour fun and enjoyable. To make it better, make the happy hour theme-related such as Christmas, the 80s, pop culture, etc.

Virtual Book Club

Online book clubs are an excellent way to get your team together away from work matters. It also develops the team as they learn and discuss the contents of the book. To get started, suggest the book the team will read in the next month, then set a meeting (preferably over a virtual lunch) to discuss it.

As the team shares takeaways from the book, they get something new to bond around and learn from each other. Even better, let each team member suggest the book that the team will read, and they will lead the discussion when the time comes to meet.

Lunch and Learn

Virtual lunches are similar to their traditional in-person lunches on virtual platforms. The team gathers together to share a (preferably company-provided) meal and participate in a casual or informative session. Since these meetings don’t require physical space, they are much easier to plan than in-person ones. The good thing is they can be just as engaging and help build happier and stronger teams.

You need to be very creative in how you handle the lunch part. It’s best to reimburse the employees for takeout or food delivery. Alternatively, use food delivery services near them and let them select their preferred foods.

Learn more about lunch and learn team-building activities.

Virtual Murder Mysteries

Solving a mystery is one of the best ways to engage and bond with your remote team. This team-building game is designed to develop teamwork, collaboration, and team building in a virtual team. It forces the team to communicate and develop critical thinking. Explore a variety of Virtual Murder Mystery games.

War of the Wizards

War of the Wizards is an online game facilitated by a master over a video conferencing platform. The game, which takes over 90 minutes, engages the team to solve puzzles, tell stories, and complete the challenges to earn items. The mechanics of this game are fun and engaging. It forces the team members to collaborate and critically think and come up with solutions through friendly competition. If your team loves puzzles, escape rooms, and murder mysteries, they’ll sure love War of the Wizards.

Virtual Werewolf

While virtual Werewolf may be more complex than most other team-building games, it is an interesting and engaging game to play with remote co-workers. It requires an experienced facilitator for the game to be a joyous experience.

Team Building Icebreakers

Icebreaker questions are an underrated way to get to know team members in a virtual team. The most common way to use icebreakers is to ask one question at the start of any virtual meeting. These are called the one-question icebreakers used to warm up a meeting. The best part is these icebreaker questions can be just about anything. Non-work-related is the best way to bond as they show the company’s interest in the team members' lives beyond work. Some examples of such icebreaker questions are:

• “What’s your dream vacation?"
• “What is one thing the team doesn’t know about you?”
• “What is your favorite movie of all time?”
• “What book best describes your life right now?” To make this game even more fun and engaging, and where possible, ask the team to bring the items and show as they tell.

Here are some more icebreaker questions.

Truth or Dare

This game is an all favorite among many as it’s accompanied by some good laugh. The online version of Truth and Dare gets even better with remote-related questions. Since this is a work-related activity, it’s best to keep the questions work-friendly. Fortunately, there are online platforms for randomly creating truth prompts. But to start with, you can begin by asking good truth questions like "what’s the last time you Googled?"

Virtual Escape Room

Virtual Escape Room is a popular super fun team-building activity. The game can be highly engaging, but also challenging. In this game, the team aims at solving the problems, riddles, and puzzles fast enough to escape the room. Since the game requires a lot of oneness, it encourages collaboration, teamwork, and team building.

Learn how you can use Escape Rooms for your virtual team building.

Virtual Games

There are many popular online games available that are a perfect fit for virtual team building. Such games include Pictionary, Charades, Draw the Picture and more. They can be incorporated into the company team-building or played in everyday virtual meetings to bond the team. The good thing is, there’s an endless list of free online group games for work.

Check out our favorite list of team-building virtual games.

Virtual Cook Party

Traditionally, food has been used as the main component to bond people in meetings, parties, and gatherings. Plus, that’s just eating together, so you can imagine what cooking the food with your team would do. Lack of physical meetings shouldn’t stop you from hosting Cook Parties.

You can host some fun and interactive virtual cook classes and parties over Zoom. Just have the ingredients sent to all participants, then a trained chef will guide the team through the cooking process. Once the Cook Party is over, enjoy the delicious food and drinks over casual conversation.

Something in Common

One of the best ways to bring people together is to show them how alike they are to their peers. That’s what Something in Common virtual game does. The game requires team members to be paired or in small groups where they must then find 3-5 things they have in common. They’ll then share their findings with the team. As the teammates find the things they have in common, they’ll feel alike and accepted by their peers. This will foster trust, engagement, and enhance high performance in the team.

Talent Show: Virtual Edition

A virtual talent show is a great medium for building cohesiveness amongst remote teams. It allows the team members to showcase their talents, gifts, and performing acts beyond the workplace skills. Such performances can be songs, storytelling, poems, magic tricks, and dances, among others.

Virtual talent shows can give the same experience as the office talent show. The cheering over breathtaking shows and laughing over funny acts can be incredible in bringing the remote team together. Beyond connecting them, talent shows are a perfect opportunity to give special recognition to the talents as employees take a break from work.

Scattergories

As a much more familiar team-building activity, Scattergories has a way of always bringing people together. Each participant is sent a link to the game, where a letter and a list of the categories are selected. The participant has one minute to come up with a word that starts with the specific letter in a given category. It may sound simple, but you can be sure of this game challenging your colleagues.

Can You Hear Me Now? Game

For this game, every participant takes a turn in being the speaker. Everyone else is referred to as the “artists”. The speaker picks a random image that they must describe for the artists to draw. The tricky part is the speaker only uses geometric shapes. This makes it even more challenging for the artists to draw. Since the game requires a high level of listening and articulation, it fosters great communication in remote teams.

Guess the Emoji Sentence

This team-building game is one with an endless possibility of laughter. The game starts with a team member acting the role of the creator. Here, they come up with a sentence in a given topic, but only in emojis. The other participants then state the answers. The topic can be about the company, news events, songs, or movies.

Bottomline

Now with most team members working remotely, managers have had to rethink what team building looks like. Without face-to-face touch, it’s more necessary than ever to plan team-building activities that serve remote employees. Use the above online games for virtual teams to connect your team, have fun, and achieve a sense of togetherness with all employees working remotely.

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