Blog · Ideas

Remote Team Building Games

3 October 2026 · 5 min read

The best remote team building games are short, optional and easy to join from any laptop. They give people something to talk about besides work, and the good ones work whether your team shares a time zone or is spread across five.

Here are live icebreakers, online party games and async games people play in their own time.

What makes a remote game work

• Low effort to join. One link, no installs, no accounts if you can help it.
• Short. Ten to twenty minutes beats a forced hour.
• Optional. The keenest people make the atmosphere; pressured people drain it.
• Fair to non-gamers. Luck and humour should matter as much as skill.
• Time-zone friendly. At least some games should work without everyone online together.

Live icebreakers (5-10 minutes, no tools)

1. Two truths and a lie. Each person shares three statements; the team guesses the lie. Good for new teams.
2. Show and tell. Everyone holds one object from their desk up to the camera and explains it in thirty seconds.
3. Desert island picks. One book, one album, one snack. Expect strong opinions.
4. Guess the desk. Before the call, people send a photo of their workspace to the host. Everyone guesses whose is whose.
5. This or that. Rapid choices (tea or coffee, beach or mountains) in the chat. Nobody has to speak, which helps quieter colleagues.

Online party games (15-30 minutes, live)

• Skribbl.io. A free drawing and guessing game in the browser. One person draws a word, everyone else types guesses.
• Gartic Phone. A browser version of the telephone game with drawings: write a phrase, the next person draws it, the next describes the drawing, and so on.
• Codenames. The word-association team game has an official online version, and it works well over video with two teams of spymasters and guessers.
• A team quiz. One person writes ten questions, including a few about the company and the team. Rotate the quizmaster each month.

Async games (any time, any time zone)

Async games are underrated: nobody misses out because of a school run or a late time zone.

• Photo challenges. A weekly theme (your view today, something blue, your lunch) posted in a shared channel.
• Daily puzzles. A results thread for Wordle or Connections gives the team a small shared moment every morning.
• A golf league. Everyone plays the same short course on their own schedule and the scores go on a shared board.

Running a golf league with Mashy

Mashy is a free pixel-art golf game that runs in the browser on laptops and phones. Its daily course changes every day, with the same pins and wind for every player, and only your first card counts. That makes it a fair async contest: nine short holes, about ten minutes, played whenever suits.

1. One person logs in and goes to the Clubhouse, then invites the team by email, a reusable invite link or a code.
2. Teammates log in with an emailed six-digit code, with no password needed.
3. Everyone plays the daily on the same day. TODAY'S BOARD in the clubhouse ranks the team by that day's score.
4. Players can share a spoiler-free grid of coloured squares, one per hole, to the team chat.

Run it once a week and keep a points table for a monthly champion. For a single live event instead, follow the office golf tournament plan, which fits the whole thing into ten minutes.

Choosing the right game

Tips for organisers

• Ask the team what they'd enjoy, and drop anything that falls flat.
• Cameras optional, always.
• Keep prizes silly: naming the team playlist, choosing the next quiz topic.

Try it in Mashy

Send the team a link to Mashy with a note to play today's daily. For more competitive formats once the league settles in, see scramble golf rules and golf games to play with friends remotely.