Charades

How to play

1. Set the teams and the shape of the match: Tap + / − for 1-4 teams (one team is a co-op high-score run) and type the team names. Then pick a word pack (Around you / Critters / Snack time / People stuff), a difficulty (Warm-up / Regular / Tricky), a turn length (45, 60 or 90 seconds) and how many turns each team gets (2, 3 or 4). The counter in the corner shows how many words that combination can still draw. Everything has a default, so you can just hit Start.
2. Read the handoff screen, then hit “I'm ready”: The handoff screen names the team that is up and the turn number, plus the three bans: no talking, no sound effects, no pointing at objects in the room or spelling in the air. Arrows show the mapping — tilt down means you got it, tilt up means pass. “I'm ready” asks for motion access; decline it and the game plays exactly the same by tapping the two bars.
3. Hold the phone up and call them out: After the 3-2-1 the first word flips in. Hold the phone at forehead height with the screen facing the room. Your team acts, you shout guesses; tap the green bar along the bottom when you get one and the card flies down, tap the grey bar along the top to pass and it flies up. When time runs out the card on screen is voided and scores nothing, then the recap lists every call so you can flip any of them before handing over.

Rules & variants

Charades here is three things: a word appears on screen that only the person holding the phone cannot see, the rest of the team acts it out, and the holder calls it. Every word you get is one point for that team; passing scores zero, costs nothing and is unlimited. The two judging bars are on screen from the first frame — green always along the bottom, grey always along the top. That up/down mapping is the whole control scheme, so the holder can tell what just happened from peripheral vision alone.

Match shape: total turns = teams × turns per team, rotating by team order, so two teams over three turns each go A B A B A B. Every turn runs the same four beats — handoff, 3-2-1, the timed performance, and the recap. The countdown is not part of the turn length; the clock starts on the frame the first word appears. Tapping during the countdown skips it and never registers as a call.

Scoring and winning: teams are ranked on their regulation total. If two or more teams tie for first, overtime starts automatically — each tied team plays one 30-second turn and only that round's score counts. Still tied? A second round. After two rounds a remaining tie is declared a joint win and said so on the results card. Overtime points are shown separately and never folded into the regulation total, because a 30-second turn is not comparable to a full one.

The one rule people misread: because a new word is pushed the instant you judge the last one, there is always exactly one unjudged word on screen. When the clock hits zero that word is voided — no point, not listed in the recap — and it goes back into the match's undrawn pool. So every turn voids exactly one card, including a turn you end early from the drawer.

The per-turn recap is the important addition. It lists every word this turn with its hit/pass mark; tap any row to flip the call and both the turn score and the running total update immediately. The arguments a room actually has — “he talked”, “that gesture doesn't count”, “I tapped the wrong bar” — are things software cannot judge, so the ruling is handed straight back to the room and takes two seconds instead of a restart.

Packs and difficulty are two independent dials. The pack chooses the subject area (everyday objects, animals, food and drink, human actions and jobs). The difficulty is about how hard the word is to ACT, not how obscure it is: Warm-up words are objects you can mime at a glance, Regular ones need two or three linked gestures, Tricky ones lean on a situation or a saying. The first word of every turn always comes from the Warm-up bucket, which keeps the opening seconds of each turn from stalling.

How repeats actually work: within one shuffle cycle nothing comes back — every word judged this match is excluded. On top of that the game tries to avoid the words your last match used (a snapshot is frozen at kick-off); that softer layer is dropped automatically when it would empty the pool, so it never blocks you. If a pack really runs dry the status line says so and the pack reshuffles. The promise is therefore “no repeats within a shuffle cycle”, not “no repeats ever” — and the one moment that matters is announced on screen.

The two input channels are equals, not a primary and a fallback. Tapping the bars and tilting the phone are both live from the first frame, run through the same judging function and play the same animation. When motion is unavailable — no sensor, permission declined, insecure context, desktop browser — the bars carry a permanent “tap here” line and nothing is thrown or re-requested. One head dip crosses the threshold for many frames in a row, so after a call the phone must return near level before the sensor arms again, and anything inside 250 milliseconds is swallowed on purpose.

Saving and resuming: a match in progress is stored locally as an event log. Refresh or come back from the background and you land on the pause screen with the seconds left, the current word, every call already made and the per-turn scores restored exactly — but it never resumes by itself, because the performance was already interrupted and running the clock would just burn the team's time. Hit Resume for a short 2-1 countdown. The timer reads a monotonic clock, so changing the system time or the time zone has no effect.

Variants and house rules: one team turns the game into a co-op run with no winner, where the results card reports total words called and your best single turn. A quick match is 2 turns × 45 seconds per team (about four minutes); a long one is 4 turns × 90 seconds. Turning off “Tilt to judge” on the setup screen makes it tap-only and stops any sensor listening. Add your own house rules on top — “talking voids the word” has an obvious home in the recap screen.

Three things beginners lose points on: hanging on to a word instead of passing (passing is free and unlimited — ten seconds stuck costs you two words); acting the detail before the category (show whether it is an animal, a food or an action first, then narrow); and the holder watching faces instead of hands, when talking is banned and the whole message is in the body.

A worked example with two teams and three turns each: the Reds judge five cards and get four, the Blues judge six and get four, and after six turns both sit on 13. The tie sends the match to overtime round one, each team plays a single 30-second turn, the Reds get two and the Blues get three — the Blues win and no second round happens. The card shows a six-column regulation table reading 4/4/5/3/4/6, 26 words called against 6 passes, and the overtime score on its own line.

FAQ