Emoji Charades

Emoji Charades takes the centuries-old game of charades and gives it a distinctly modern twist: instead of acting out clues with your body, you communicate using only emojis. Players must string together emoji combinations to represent movies, songs, phrases, books, or other prompts while their teammates try to decode the message.

The game works beautifully in both in-person and remote settings, which is a big advantage over traditional charades. In a video call, the emoji player simply types their clue in the chat or on a shared screen. This makes it one of the few party games that actually works *better* online than in person, since typing emojis is faster and more expressive than acting things out through a tiny webcam window.

What makes Emoji Charades surprisingly deep is the creative challenge of translating complex concepts into tiny pictograms. How do you represent "Inception" with emojis? Maybe a brain, a bed, and a spinning top? The sender has to think creatively, and the guessers have to think laterally. It exercises a completely different part of your brain than traditional trivia or word games.