A round
The word is on one screen
Whoever is drawing gets ten seconds to read a word nobody else can see, then ninety seconds to get it across without writing it down. The word reaches exactly one browser and there is nowhere for it to leak — the projection that carries it is asserted, seat by seat, in the test suite.
The person drawing has three controls and no more: take the last line back, start the word again, and give it up. Giving one up costs a point, so a skip is a decision rather than a reflex.
Everybody guesses at once
Guesses are typed, not shouted, and that is the point: on a call the first person to speak blocks everybody else, so a typed box lets five people guess at the same time instead of in a queue. Shout as well by all means — the point lands when somebody types it.
Get one and the table moves straight to the next word with a clean napkin. Whoever typed it takes two, whoever drew it takes one, and the clock keeps running until the ninety seconds are gone.
Then everybody sees what you drew
At the end of a turn every word from it comes up face up with the drawing that went with it and the answer underneath. It is the best part of the game and it is why the strokes are kept rather than thrown away.
On the sheet
Questions people ask
Do I need to be able to draw?
No, and the deck is built on the assumption that you cannot. Every card is one thing with a silhouette — an umbrella, a cactus, a lighthouse — and each one carries the phrasings a rough drawing will actually be read as, because a lighthouse drawn quickly is a tower and half the table will type that.
Can I write the word, or a letter?
Nothing stops you, and nothing needs to. It is a room of colleagues on a coffee break, not a tournament; if somebody writes the word the table will tell them so and it will be funnier than the drawing was.
What if it decides my right answer is wrong?
It will, occasionally. The matcher ignores case, punctuation and the little words English puts in front of a noun, and each card carries the phrasings worth taking — but it will not guess at synonyms, because a machine that awards the wrong word is worse in a room of colleagues than one that occasionally refuses the right one. The person drawing can see your near miss and push you the last inch.
Can I play it on my own?
No. It is the second game here with no machine to play against — a stand-in can neither draw nor look at a drawing, and the only thing it could honestly do in either chair is play a different game with the drawing taken out.
Does anybody have to install anything to play Napkin?
No. It runs in the browser everyone already has open. One person opens a room, reads out the six-character code or pastes the link into the channel, and everyone else is at the table in a couple of seconds.
Do we need accounts?
No. There is no sign-up, no password and no email address anywhere in the flow. You pick a name when you sit down, and that is the whole of it.
How many people can play Napkin?
3 to 8 — best with five. A room seats up to 12.
How long does a game of Napkin take?
About 15 minutes, which is the length of a coffee break rather than the length of a games night. Nobody is the host in the sense of holding the controls, so a round finishes whether or not everyone is still looking at it.
Does it work over a video call?
That is what it is for. The game is on the screen and the talking is on the call — nobody has to describe a board to anybody, and the parts that must stay private stay on the server rather than being read out.