The Telephone game mode

You know Telephone from children's parties - in ColorMari it becomes a chain of pictures and sentences. A sentence is drawn, the drawing is described by the next player, the description is drawn again, and so on. What comes out at the end often has little to do with the beginning. That's exactly the fun.

How it goes

Everyone has a book of their own, and the books go round:

1. Write. You write a sentence in your book.
2. Draw. Someone else draws your sentence.
3. Describe. The next player sees only the drawing - not your sentence - and describes it under "What is this?" in one sentence.
4. Draw. The description is drawn again. And so on.

When describing, the drawing is played back to you the way it was made. With Play again you see it a second time. If there's nothing to see on a drawing, just write whatever comes to mind.

Who sees what

Nobody sees more than the turn before their own. You see the sentence you're to draw, or the drawing you're to describe - not the rest of the chain. In the player list you can still see who is still busy with their turn.

Only in the reveal at the end is every book shown from front to back: from the first sentence to the last picture.

When someone writes nothing

If someone writes nothing, because time ran out or they left, the game fills in a text so the next player has something to draw:

• If a description is missing, the book's text before it carries on.
• If the first sentence is missing, ColorMari picks a random prompt, in German and English.

The reveal then says so: "Nothing was written here - ...".

For the host

In the lobby, click the Telephone card under Game Mode. Then you can set:

• Rounds: how many turns a book has, writing and drawing counted together. As long as there are fewer rounds than players, each player appears in each book at most once. With more rounds a book comes back to someone - to whoever has been away from it longest, and never right after their own turn.
• Time per drawing and Time per description: describing is quicker, a minute is usually enough.
• End on a drawing: every book ends on a picture. A game that would end on a description is one round shorter for it.
• Draw templates: players may lay a picture into their canvas as a sketching help - more in Drawing with templates.

Telephone is always played with the new drawing program, with layers, filters and everything listed under New drawing features in the overview.

How many people does it take?

You can start with two - but then there's only a sentence and a drawing, nobody describes. A real chain starts at three. The more people play, the further a book can drift from its first sentence.

Keeping the chain from breaking

• When drawing: draw what the sentence says, not what you suspect was there at the start.
• When describing: describe what you see - with everything that stands out. "A penguin with an umbrella in a storm" gives the next player more than "a bird".
• At the start: a sentence with a clear scene carries further than a pun that only works in writing. Tips in Writing good prompts.