Eight Text Messaging Games You Can Play Anywhere
As fast as technology moves, it's always amazing when you reflect that the main medium hasn't changed much. We started with IRC and Usenet and have come all the way to Twitter and SMS, and our primary means of communication is still sending each other little strings of text.
Well, games can be played in text, too. No need for fancy graphics or an account at a game server. Sometimes the most fun you can have is just you and your close friends, goofing around with whatever fun ideas you can come up with. So if you're looking for ideas, read on for a list of simple games you can play anywhere, anytime, using only a text service.
Induction
A long-established game idea whose roots go back to mathematical game theory. The idea is to guess a rule. That's all! To play, have one designated game-master who makes up the rule and posts it at an as-yet undisclosed location. The other players then send text messages to the game-master, who responds only with 'yes' when the message follows the rule, or 'no' when the message breaks the rule. The first one to figure out what the rule is wins. When either somebody guesses the rule or everybody gives up, reveal the rule at the place where it was posted so everybody can see it. Switch game-masters and continue the next round. Some example rules could be 'Every message must name an animal.', 'No numbers.', 'Only use iambic pentameter.', 'Each message must contain an even number of characters.' and so on.
20 Questions
Similar to Induction, but much older. You know the drill with this one: The leader starts with stating "animal, vegetable, or mineral" and everybody asks questions that can only be answered 'yes' and 'no', with the winner being the one who guesses what the secret answer is.
Fibonacci Sequence
That's the one that adds the two most recent numbers together to get the last number. Start a replied thread, and see how far it goes. You might be wondering if people really do this for fun. Yes, they do, as shown by this Reddit thread, which has gone beyond 1000 numbers!
Birthday Paradox
Another product of math theory, the birthday problem is the counter-intuitive tendency for any group of 23 or more people to have at least a 1-to-1 chance that two of them share the same birthday. Got more than 23 friends in your social network? Everybody can post their birthdays until you find two that match. Then you can compare those two people, looking for common traits. Is there something to astrology after all? Keep inviting more friends to get more birthday matches.
Meme Tag
This is already a hot trend in blogs. A list of five questions will go around, and each blogger answers the list and then tags the next blogger. This can be done in a microblog format as well! Kind of a truth-or-dare without the 'dare' part.
Trivia
Always a big favorite. Whoever's posing the question should have a link handy to back up the answer. Try to pick question that can't be answered with a quick check of Wikipedia. This is such a common game to play in text media, that many chat room platforms have their own trivia bots.
Group of Six
Similar to trivia, in fact a variation of it. The questions all follow the line of "Name six ice hockey teams.", "Find six countries with prime ministers.", "Name six British heavy metal bands.", and so on. The brain just seems to be wired so that six is the number of answers sufficient to make it challenging enough without making it too hard. Probably related to the "Magic number seven, plus or minus two."
Scavenger Hunt
Really quite simple here. You play it with search engines! The game-master here gives the list of things to find; first one to send in images from the web of all the items wins. An easy example would be "a Muppet, a typewriter, and an anthropod." A slightly harder example would specify items in combination; e.g. a rugby match with a fan wearing a blue shirt or a classroom without any alphabet letters visible.
Filed Under: Product Reviews • The Retro Stylez, Toyz
