Is this just Gartic Phone with a different name?

No. Sketch Relay shares the telephone-chain mechanic and the reveal slideshow, but the rooms are private by default and the prompts are a curated work-safe list rather than a public user-generated pool. The differences are the parts that matter at work.

Does this work in private rooms only?

Yes. Every room is private by default. The facilitator shares a link with their team, and there is no public lobby for strangers to join.

Are the prompts work-safe?

Yes. We wrote the prompt list for office meetings and there is no user-generated prompt pool to police. The bar is whether a prompt would land badly with a new hire on day one.

How long does a round take?

About 10 minutes for a team of 6 to 10. Each player adds one drawing and one description, so total time scales with team size.

Can people draw on a phone?

Yes. The drawing canvas works on touch devices. We tested it on iPhones, Android phones, and iPads.

All alternatives

Gartic Phone alternative

A Gartic-Phone-style drawing telephone, built for work

The drawing-telephone format is one of the best icebreakers ever invented for remote teams. The version your team needs at work is the same shape, with prompts written for a Friday standup instead of a Discord server and a private room that nobody outside the team can wander into.

What Gartic Phone does well

Gartic Phone is a free, fast, web-based version of the drawing-telephone game, and the end-of-round reveal animation is the best in the category. No install, instant rooms, runs on a phone. For a casual game night with friends, it is hard to beat, and we are not going to pretend it is anything other than excellent at what it set out to do.

Where workplace teams hit the wall

Two things break at work: the prompts and the room. Gartic's prompts come from a public, user-generated pool and the "Animation" and "Secret" modes lean adult fast, so a five-person team warm-up is one prompt away from an HR conversation. The room is the bigger issue. Gartic rooms are designed for public lobbies, and a facilitator who fumbles the privacy setting has just put a coworker in a drawing chain with strangers. Most facilitators would rather not roll the dice on either, so the icebreaker quietly gets dropped.

What we built differently

Private rooms by default, no public matchmaking, no setting to fumble. The prompt list is curated for work meetings, so the worst case is a slightly silly drawing rather than something the facilitator has to apologize for in the next 1:1. Same telephone-chain mechanic, same reveal slideshow at the end. The work-safe bar is held by the people who write the prompts, not by hoping a public pool behaves.

Drop-in replacement games

Sketch RelayThe direct drop-in for Gartic Phone. Each person draws what the previous person described, then the chain reveals as a slideshow at the end. Private room, work-safe prompts, about 10 minutes for a team of 6 to 10.15+m4–10 Creative CanvasNot a telephone chain. Everyone adds to one shared canvas and the team sees the final piece together. Reach for this when you want a collaborative drawing rather than the competitive chain of misinterpretations.5m1+Franken-drawEach person draws one body part of the same character without seeing the others, then we stitch them together. Quick, forgiving, and the funniest option for teams who keep insisting they cannot draw.10m3–8 Speed SketchThe Pictionary-shaped one. One person draws a work-safe prompt against the clock while the rest of the team races to guess it. Use this when you want guessing energy rather than a hand-off chain.10m3–10

Common questions

Is this just Gartic Phone with a different name?: No. Sketch Relay shares the telephone-chain mechanic and the reveal slideshow, but the rooms are private by default and the prompts are a curated work-safe list rather than a public user-generated pool. The differences are the parts that matter at work.
Does this work in private rooms only?: Yes. Every room is private by default. The facilitator shares a link with their team, and there is no public lobby for strangers to join.
Are the prompts work-safe?: Yes. We wrote the prompt list for office meetings and there is no user-generated prompt pool to police. The bar is whether a prompt would land badly with a new hire on day one.
How long does a round take?: About 10 minutes for a team of 6 to 10. Each player adds one drawing and one description, so total time scales with team size.
Can people draw on a phone?: Yes. The drawing canvas works on touch devices. We tested it on iPhones, Android phones, and iPads.

Where these tend to fit

Icebreakers for Team OffsitesFor offsite organizers Free Icebreaker Games for Remote TeamsFor distributed teams 5-Minute Icebreaker Games for Team MeetingsFor weekly meetings

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