Online Team Building Games for Remote Teams (Dumb Charades)
Remote teams need shared experiences—not just status updates. Dumb Charades is one of the simplest online team building games because it’s low-prep, inclusive, and instantly energizing.
Planning a weekly ritual? See Fun Friday.
Why team building matters for remote teams
In a co-located office, culture happens in the spaces between meetings: hallway chats, casual lunches, and spontaneous moments that help people feel connected. Remote work removes most of those touchpoints. Over time, teams can drift into “transactional mode” where collaboration becomes purely functional: tickets, tasks, and async updates.
That’s why online team building games matter. They create safe, lightweight ways to build familiarity. The best activities don’t feel like forced fun—they feel like a shared break that resets energy and improves communication.
Dumb Charades as a team-building activity
Dumb Charades works for team building because it’s a fast loop of cooperation: one person communicates without words, and everyone else collectively searches for meaning. That dynamic mirrors real work in a playful way— especially in cross-functional groups where context and interpretation matter.
It also has an important advantage: the barrier to entry is tiny. You don’t need special knowledge. You don’t need to be “good at games.” You can join, laugh, and contribute within seconds.
Benefits for teams
1) Communication
Remote collaboration is full of ambiguity: tone in chat, incomplete context, and different working styles. Dumb Charades trains teams to communicate clearly under constraints. Actors learn to be intentional with gestures. Guessers learn to ask the right questions and build on each other’s guesses.
2) Collaboration
Great teams share cognitive load. In a Dumb Charades round, people naturally split into roles: one person tracks hints, another focuses on categories, and others iterate quickly. That “yes-and” momentum is exactly what you want in real projects.
3) Stress relief
Short, playful activities reduce tension and prevent burnout. Laughter is a powerful social glue, and it’s a low-cost way to raise morale—especially during heavy delivery cycles, incident weeks, or big launches.
How ActNGuess supports remote and distributed teams
Dumb Charades is a category. ActNGuess is the best way to play it online. Instead of juggling spreadsheets, random word lists, and messy turn-taking, ActNGuess gives you a clean, real-time multiplayer experience with 0 setup, automatic turn switching, built-in timer, individual scoring, and multiple prompt categories.
- Remote teams: quick setup and smooth rounds so you don’t waste the first 10 minutes organizing.
- Distributed teams: inclusive format for different functions and seniority levels.
- Hybrid teams: works whether some people are in a room and others are remote.
How to run a 30–45 minute team session (simple agenda)
- Warm-up (5 min): easy prompts (objects/actions) so shy folks can ease in.
- Main rounds (25–30 min): movies + office-friendly prompts, 60–90 seconds per turn.
- Final speed round (5–8 min): shorter timer (45–60 seconds) for a fun finish.
- Wrap-up (2 min): quick shout-outs, funniest moment, and announce the “MVP actor.”
If you want a ready word list, use the word generator (including multilingual prompts). If you want a full remote-friendly flow, run it on ActNGuess.