Sight Unseen: Can YOU use your psychic eye to draw the unseen object?
A pair of players will race to draw the secret object to the best of their ability before time runs out. Then, their teammate must guess what the secret object is.
I found Sight Unseen in The Games Bible and I thought it would be really fun to explain! It’s originally to be played in teams of two, but I expanded it to three, it seemed more fun that way. Also, this game reminds me of one that I used to play back at home called Telestrations so I will also be covering that too!
Are your psychic drawing skills good enough? Let’s find out…
Players: 3-12
Gear: 2 Chairs, Paper, Pencils, & a bunch of Random Objects
HOW TO PLAY: SIGHT UNSEEN
Break into groups of three people. Choose two to be the Describer and Drawer, and send the third person out of the room. Everyone else can stay in the main room to watch. Sit the Describer and the Drawer back to back and instruct them to not turn around or look behind them. Then give the Describer a random object (I would pile the random objects under a blanket on a side table before the game) and the Drawer a paper and pencil. Here is a random object generator to help you think about possible items you would use!
It is the Describer’s role to describe the object by talking about it’s size, shape, texture, etc, without giving away the object. For example, if the object is a tire jack, the Describer cannot say “It is a tire jack” or “it is used to change tires.” It is not the point of the game to make it easy for your partner to understand what the object is, in fact, if the Drawer doesn’t know what the object is even as it is described, that’s fantastic!
The Describer has two minutes to give as much detail without giving away too much information about the object. During the two minutes, the Drawer draws what they suppose the object looks like based on the Describer’s descriptions. After two minutes, the moderator should tell them to stop, put the object away and have the third team member come out. Once the moderator says to begin, the third team member may begin to take guesses at what the object is. The moderator should time this, and stop the stopwatch when they guess correctly. Record the time it took to guess and switch which team is playing.
One slight variation is: instead of having one person guessing, have one representative from each team step outside the room, and when the two minutes are up, have them race back in to see which team can guess it first!
WINNING
The team that wins is the team that guesses their object in the least amount of time or by being the team that has the most correct guesses of what the object is!
HOW TO PLAY: TELESTRATIONS
Telestrations is another fun drawing game that builds off of another game that most people know fairly well… Telephone! We all know that when you play Telephone that the message gets lost in translation along the way. But what if you switched up the message between drawing and writing it?
That’s what Telestrations is! It’s a mix between Telephone and illustrating. Have one player start by writing a phrase that can easily be drawn, such as “climbing a rope”
This is then passed on to the next player without anyone else seeing it, who now has about thirty seconds to draw the phrase or word. They might draw this(please excuse my horrendous sketches):
This is then passed on to the next player without anyone else seeing it, who then has to come up with a phrase that describes the picture/tries to guess the word, like “Tarzan”
This is then passed on to the next player without anyone else seeing it, who now has about a thirty seconds to draw said phrase. They might draw:
This is then passed on to the next player without anyone else seeing it, who then has to come up with a phrase that describes the picture, like “monkey trying to grab bananas”
This is then passed on to the next player without anyone else seeing it, who now has about a thirty seconds to draw said phrase. They might draw:
This is then passed on to the next player without anyone else seeing it, who then has to come up with a phrase that describes the picture, like “monkey in a tree”
There are no winners, it’s just fun seeing how the message gets misinterpreted through drawings, like “climbing a rope” eventually becomes “monkey in a tree”! Just like regular Telephone!
Author’s Note
Telestrations is actually a real published board game and a lot of fun! There a bit more rules and the game play is more organized, but the basic principles of the game were covered in the blog so you can definitely play it without buying it. Here is a link in case you want to check it out! I thought Sight Unseen was another great game because it incorporated some teamwork, guessing, and laughing. Hopefully you will be able to enjoy these soon!
Thanks for reading! Have a wonderful day!
Credits
I cannot stress enough the importance of Leigh Anderson’s fantastic book The Games Bible for inspiring these blog posts. Her book has hundreds of amazing ideas, from icebreakers, family games, and weekend getaways. This blog would not be possible without all the hard work she put into writing the book so my source for ideas and research are from her book.
Sources
- Anderson, Leigh. The Games Bible. Workman Publishing Company, 2010.
- Anderson, Leigh. “The Games BIBLE: The Ultimate Gamebook… Book by Leigh Anderson.” ThriftBooks, www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-games-bible-the-ultimate-gamebook-for-grown-ups-307-games-to-put-the-fun-back-in-parties_leigh-anderson/571781/#edition=5740103&idiq=12407424
- https://www.generatorslist.com/random/misc/random-object-generator
- https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/46213/telestrations
Image Sources
- https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.433426011.8724/flat,750×1000,075,f.u1.jpg
- https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/eb67a108-d385-4ebe-99b9-efdc9e161095_1.3f308bbe63a69ca5627dd6f4ca60f6b7.jpeg
- https://cdn4.vectorstock.com/i/1000×1000/85/73/a-boy-and-girl-sitting-back-to-back-vector-3478573.jpg
- https://c8.alamy.com/comp/W4KHT0/sketch-police-man-inspecting-with-large-magnifying-glass-facing-up-W4KHT0.jpg
- All images related to Telestrations created by Nicholas Bodie
This seems like an interesting game Personally I drew a comparison to taboo and Pictionary. It seems like a mashup of both. The guessing and describing elements seem to come from Taboo, and drawing the guesses comes from Pictionary. It seems like an interesting concept.
Sight Unseen definitely seems like a cool game to play with a group of friends, and I can see how this game can get competitive. As for Telestrations, I have played the game before with my family and it was a source of many laughs with them, especially when there is one member who cannot draw for their life, which completely derails the word guessing. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed harder in my life than when my aunt tried to draw a rocking horse and it failed miserably. I would definitely play this again, even with my friends here at Penn State!
Sight unseen seems like a great group game. More than anything, it seems like a twist on Pictionary, but I like the extra confounding factor of adding an intermediary between the drawer, the describer, and the guesser. I also feel like it would be more competitive than Pictionary for this reason.