What matters at work
At an office party, people play with colleagues they know to very different degrees and will work with again on Monday. Good games for this setting get people talking without making anyone look silly. Nobody should have to perform alone in front of the group, and alcohol should not be part of the rules. People who don't drink should be just as much part of it as everyone else.
Consider language and background knowledge too. International teams do better with games that don't reward perfect phrasing. Quiz Night lets you choose English or German questions before you start, and the app itself is available in 17 languages.
Low-effort setup
Most meeting rooms already have a TV or projector. If a Mac is connected, Gather turns it into the game table and opens the board in its own window. An Apple TV or an iPad on the big screen works too. Colleagues scan the QR code and play in their browser, with no app, no account and no sign-up.
One thing is worth testing in advance: many corporate and guest Wi-Fi networks keep devices apart from each other, which is called client isolation. When that is on, phones can't find the game table on the Wi-Fi. Try it with two devices before the event. If the game table is online, joining still works: the QR code then goes through gathergames.de, and colleagues can join over mobile data, for example. Our relay server only passes messages along; the game itself runs on the game table.
Icebreakers to get started
Quiz Night is the easiest way in. Everyone plays on their own phone, nobody has to speak in front of the group, and the leaderboard after each question gives people something to talk about. Categories and the number of questions let you control the length, so it even fits into a lunch break.
Fib Finder breaks the ice in a different way. The TV shows a surprising question, everyone types a made-up answer, and then you all try to spot the real one. You quickly find out who on the team is a convincing fibber, and nobody is in the spotlight because the answers appear anonymously and shuffled.
Team games that bring people together
Cover Word suits team events particularly well. Two teams, each with a clue giver who has to link several words on the board with a single clue. The team discusses which words are meant, and you get exactly the conversations a team event is for: listening, weighing ideas, deciding together. Mix the teams across departments on purpose.
Say It Different is louder and faster. For 60 seconds, one person explains words without using the forbidden ones, while a watcher from the other team keeps them honest. People who would rather not explain can shine at guessing. If the mood is relaxed enough, Sketch Round fits too, and bad drawing is very much allowed.
A 60 to 90 minute run of show
Open with Quiz Night while people are still arriving and grabbing drinks. Follow with two or three rounds of Fib Finder to loosen everyone up. Make Cover Word or Say It Different in mixed teams the main event. Close with Letter Hunt for up to ten people or, for smaller teams of up to six, a few races of Corner Chaos.
Cover Word and Say It Different take up to twelve players. For bigger teams, form pairs who share one phone, or run several tables in parallel, each with its own screen.