Five rounds 🖐
Is this the best party game ever? Yes. Yes it is.
Years ago when I was on holiday at the beach I ran into an old friend from university. After briefly catching up with them they invited my partner and I to their New Years Eve party that night.
A party sounded fun! We were in.
Little did we know it was less ‘house party’ and more of a ‘close friend dinner party’.
AND my old friend forgot to tell them they invited us.
Whoops. 😅
But we were there and so we were politely invited to join for dinner and proceeded to engage in awkward conversation. The kind of awkward conversation where everyone else is a close friend and you’re not, so you need all the in-jokes and background information to be explained.
Communication under that kind of pressure can be difficult.
However, this soon changed as we were introduced to literally the best party game I have ever played.
The game broke the ice, the awkwardness was gone, we were all on the same playing field in terms of knowledge, and we ended up having an absolute blast (I’m sure the champagne helped a little as well).
What’s interesting though was that this game is based on communication. And the communication in this game is still difficult, but it’s a fun difficult.
Get ready for our first communication game recommendation. Five Rounds. It’s fun, flexible, free, personalised and possibly the best party game ever.
All you need is paper, pens and some kind of receptacle to hold everyone’s ridiculous words.
Five Rounds
Age: 8 - 109 years
Skill Level:
Communication: 8+ years
Teamwork: 8+ years
Working memory: 8+ years
Players: 4-20 players
Duration: ~30-60 mins
Five Rounds is a really clever party game.
It repackages mechanics from other classic party games (i.e., Articulate and Charades) and combines it with your own custom words and experiences to create a unique game experience every time you play it.
It also seems to share some roots with the game Celebrities and has similarities the the game Monikers.
The Setup
In Five Rounds, everyone divides up into 2-4 teams (a maximum of 5 players per team is best). For a 30-min game we recommend around 30 items. So if you have a total of 10 players, everyone is given 3 slips of paper and can write anything they want on them.
That’s right, ANYTHING.
Single words work the best.
Some great ones we’ve come up with over the last few years include BATMAN, CAT, JURASSIC PARK, SAM (he’s a friend), WIZARD, & POOP (can you tell my friends and I are all very highbrow, articulate and well-versed?).
If the group likes a challenge, you could also mix it up with a couple of phrases or sentences. Make sure they are well known though, like “IT’S RAINING CATS & DOGS”, or “LET’S GET TO THE CHOPPER” 🚁, otherwise the game might drag.
Everyone’s slips of paper go into a bowl (or a hat, or a saucepan - basically anything that will hold paper and is easy to grab a single slip of paper out at a time).
Then the game begins!
Round 1 - Describe it
Pick a starting team. That team nominates a person. That person will pick a slip of paper from the bowl and then has to describe it to their team without using the word or phrase on it, or any part of it (basically the rules to the game Articulate).
For example, I might describe the following “He’s a superhero, known as the Dark Knight, he’s moody, has a partner named Robin…”
And there’s a good chance you would say... Batman. If not you’re off my team, dead to me and we can’t be friends any more (I’m Joking! I’m such a Joker… 😛).
If the team guesses correctly, then that team keeps the slip of paper and it counts as a point at the end of the round. Nice!
If the team is struggling to guess, the person describing can choose to skip up to one slip of paper (but only one!).
The team has a total of 45 seconds to guess as many as possible before play moves to the next team.
The round continues until all the slips have been guessed.
Communication is key to getting as many points as possible.
At the end of the round tally all the points and then the slips go back into the bowl.
If you thought that was fun, just you wait…
Round 2 - Just one word
Round 2 is played exactly the same way as round 1 except this time the person describing the slip of paper can ONLY use one word to describe it.
For example, I might describe the following “Robin”.
And there’s a chance you might remember from the first round a certain dark knight that has a partner called Robin and you would say… Batman.
And this is another great part of the game. Not only is choosing what word to use to communicate important, but the working memory of your team is important too.
You’re practicing three super important skills with this game; communication, working memory, and of course, teamwork.
At the end of the round tally all the points and then the slips go back into the bowl.
If you think this round is tricky, just you wait…
Round 3 - Sound effects or singing
In Round 3 you’ve lost your ability to speak a language and can only communicate in sound effects or singing (no words though!).
For example, I might sing “NA NA NA NA NA NA…” which is quite difficult to get across in written format so here’s the music to help you envision me singing it.
On a side note: After finding this video my mind is blown that there are actually no lyrics for the “na na na na” part. Apparently it seems to be a common misconception that there are. 🤯
At the end of the round tally all the points and then the slips go back into the bowl.
With that round over it’s time for round 4!
Round 4 - Charades
You know the drill. No speaking, sound effects or words. Just you and your friends flailing around trying to mime a bat, or throwing a gadget, or walking like a man. (Yes some clues are better than others)
At the end of the round tally all the points and then the slips go back into the bowl.
One more round left!
Round 5 - Finger puppets
This is my favourite round. For this round it helps if the describer gets behind a couch so only their hands can be seen.
In this round the describer (if we can call them that any more) uses their hands to describe each word or phrase.
By this point it’s mostly your working memory doing all the work as you just shout out everything that has come before.
At the end of this round tally up the scores for all the rounds and crown a winning team! 🥇
How to use this game
Learn the game
The game is fairly straightforward, particularly if there are people who have played Articulate or Charades before.
I’ve found a useful approach to teaching the game is to introduce the rules for each round just before that round begins.
This breaks up the learning and makes it easier to focus on each round as they come.
I’ve found that it works best played just once per party. If you play it a second time people usually write longer and weirder things which makes the gameplay a little longwinded or confusing.
Playing the game
The game scales in time with the number of slips of paper. With more paper in each round, of course it takes longer to guess them all, but it also posts a challenge for our working memory, and some extra confusion in communication. I’ve found 20-30 slips of paper is a good number for a game.
You can adjust this on the fly for a quicker game in two ways.
Reduce the total number of slips of paper
Reduce the number of rounds from 5 to 3
If you’re reducing the number of rounds you can choose which ones to exclude. I recommend keeping round 1 (describe), round 2 (one word) and round 3 (charades).
Learning Points
This game is all about communication under pressure and in front of people.
With that in mind it’s a great game to encourage thinking under pressure. Trying to articulate what you want to say according to the rules and in a way that communicates what’s in your head is tricky. Often we think we’re being clear when communicating what we want, or people can read our minds, but this game quickly shows you this isn’t the case. It encourages you to rethink how people interpret what you’re trying to say and challenges you to try communicating things in different ways if the first way you tried didn’t work.
It’s also common to be a bit shy presenting in front of other people. So this game provides a safe and fun environment to practice this. Rounds are short and the stakes are low.
The other thing I like about this game is learning what words to put down at the start will be easy or tricky to communicate. It’s not until you start trying to communicate the words or phrases that you might realise some are a lot more difficult than others.
Pro tips to game and learn
Make sure to be clear and fair on the rules
You’ll often find some guesses come down to the wire. Make sure you decide at the start if you’ll allow guesses that go a few seconds over the timer or if nothing counts after the timer goes.
Common knowledge
When we are writing down answers, make sure the information is common knowledge. While Batman and Joker are great, Clayface and Killer Croc (lesser known villains in Batman series) will probably make a few people go “Who now?”.
But hey, if you want to do a themed Five Rounds, go for it.
Great for all ages and special events
The thing I love about this game is it’s super accessible. It’s great for any age and can be tailored to any event. We recently played it at a buck’s night (I know, take it easy right?) where everything written down had to be about the groom to be. It made for a fun and memorable experience.
Best time with your kids
Communication is not easy, and Five Rounds does something that is a bit magical: your kids are trying to communicate something to you, and you give the correct answer! This creates a special bond and trust that are not easy to replicate.
You can play this with your small family. Heck, you can play the game with just one other child, and still have a good time.
And we think this is one great way to create a foundation for your family to communicate other more complex and abstract messages.
We hope you enjoyed our first game recommendation in the communication series! Please help us out by giving us a rating and feedback below. We would love it even more if you share our newsletter to your friends and families!
Otherwise, if you have any questions or any suggestions on what educational skills you’d like to teach your kids then leave a comment below.
Until next time, game and learn with Five Rounds!
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Great post and great game. Will try it asap!