Hosting a great Imposketch game night
Imposketch needs almost no setup: one host creates a room and everyone joins on their own phone. A little preparation still makes the difference between a game that drags and one people ask to play again. This checklist is for whoever ends up running the room.
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Before people arrive
- Make sure everyone has a phone or laptop with a browser. Nobody needs an account or an app.
- Check the Wi-Fi password is easy to find. A guest stuck on mobile data in a basement is the most common delay.
- Decide on a match length. 3 rounds is a warm-up, 5 is the usual, and 8 suits a group that's already hooked.
- Charge the device you'll host from. The host's phone stays in the room the whole game.
Getting everyone in
Create the room and share the link in your group chat, or read out the short room code. If you're playing in person, put the lobby on a TV or laptop: its QR code is big enough to scan from across the room, so people join without typing anything.
You need three players to start a classic round. If you're short, invite the friends you have and let bots fill the remaining seats.
House rules worth agreeing on
- Phones face down or tilted away while drawing. Peeking ruins it for the peeker too.
- No writing words or letters in drawings.
- Discussion happens after the spotlight, before people lock in their final vote. Give it a minute, not ten.
- The impostor is allowed to lie. Everyone else is allowed to accuse. Nobody is allowed to be mean about drawings.
Keeping the energy up
The best moment of a round is the reveal, when the table learns that the weird giraffe was actually a deer. Give it room: read the two prompts out loud and let the impostor explain themselves. Then start the next round right away, before attention drifts.
If one person keeps getting caught, remind them of the comeback. A caught impostor who names the real prompt steals +2 back, so they're never out of a match.
Mixed groups
Imposketch works across ages and drawing skill because a scribble is as good as a sketch. Our terms require players to be 13 or older. For a group that includes people who don't share a language, each player can use the game in their own language: the interface and prompts are translated, so everyone gets the same prompt in their own words.
When there are more than eight of you
A classic room seats up to eight. With a bigger crowd, run two rooms and swap players between matches, or let extra people watch the drawings on a big screen and join the discussion. Watching people who know the prompt try to guess the impostor is surprisingly fun.