PULTEVENT
Charades on screen: 6 versions for a room of 20 to 200
A school fundraiser in the gym hall, basketball hoops folded up to the ceiling. Round three: the dads' team against the teachers. A dad in a rugby shirt has been given the word "photosynthesis". He points at the ceiling lights, turns himself into a tree, and then, for reasons nobody understands, starts doing breaststroke. The teachers are crying with laughter. His own team is shouting "swimming pool" with total conviction. The clock on the big screen says eleven seconds.
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Charades at home is easy. Charades for eighty or two hundred people is a different game. The back of the room can't see the actor, the front row shouts every answer, and the host spends the round trying to hear who said the right word first.
PULTEVENT runs charades from the host console onto the big screen: the secret word stays on your laptop and phone remote, the timer and the team scores go on the projector, and the actor plays for their own table rather than for the whole hall. Here are six versions I use, and what makes each one work.
6 versions of charades for a room of 20 to 200
1 Table plays for table
One person from each table stands up and acts for their own table. The other tables watch, heckle and wait their turn. Points go on the scoreboard.
How to run it. Ask the actor to face their own table with their back to the room. It feels wrong, and it's exactly right.
It fixes the two big problems of charades in a hall: the actor is visible to the people guessing, and only one table shouts at a time.
2 Movies, songs and TV
Swap the built-in words for a themed list. Film titles for a movie night, song titles for a music crowd, TV shows for a family that argues about TV.
How to run it. Write the list with the room's age in mind. What a group of sixty-year-olds acts out is different from what a group of students will get.
A shared culture makes guessing faster, and faster guessing is funnier.
3 Office jargon
For a company party: "quarterly review", "reply all", "camera off", "circle back". The words are the office's own language.
How to run it. Ask someone from the company for ten phrases people actually say in meetings. You'd never guess them from outside.
People love acting out the things that annoy them at work. It is the cheapest therapy on the menu.
4 Against the clock
Sixty seconds on the big screen and the actor tries to get through as many words as possible. Skipping is allowed.
How to run it. Read the score out loud after each round, even with it on screen. "The teachers have seven" puts pressure on the dads.
The clock makes people move faster than they think they can, and speed is where the comedy is.
5 Actor chosen by the wheel
Before each round, the guest wheel spins on the screen and lands on the name of the next actor. The task randomizer can add a twist: act it out without using your hands.
How to run it. Allow a table to swap the actor once. Forced performers are never funny.
It shares the game around, so the same three extroverts don't take every turn.
6 Big hall with a guest camera
When the room is too big to see the actor, one guest films them on a phone and the host puts the picture on the projector.
How to run it. Pick the camera guest before the round and test their connection. A frozen picture mid-mime is not the laugh you want.
The back tables finally see the dad doing breaststroke, which is the whole reason they came.
Only the actor sees the word
The word is on your laptop and your phone remote. You walk over, show the actor, and the room sees nothing.
A clock everyone can read
A big on-screen timer runs the round. Space bar pauses it. Nobody argues about whether time was up.
Scores on the projector
The team scoreboard sits on the big screen, so the tables at the back care what happens at the front.
No guest phones needed
Charades runs from the host's laptop. Guests answer with their voices, the way the game was meant to be played.
Why charades breaks down in a big room
In a living room everyone sits two metres from the actor. In a hall of eighty, the far table is fifteen metres away, behind a pillar and a waiter with a tray, and the light is behind the actor. Gestures that read instantly at home become a vague flapping.
Then there's the noise. When fifty people shout guesses at once, the host only hears the front row and ends up picking an answer almost at random. The back tables decide, correctly, that the game isn't for them. Acting for your own table fixes both problems in one move.
Where charades fits in the evening
Not at the start. Charades asks people to stand up and perform, and in the first hour nobody is ready. The best slot is after the main course, when the room dips and needs something physical to wake it up.
Keep it to twenty minutes. If you have a quiz in the programme, put charades one block after it: the quiz is seated and thoughtful, charades is loud and physical, and the two together give the evening a rhythm. Two loud blocks in a row wear out even a lively crowd.
What the host does while people act
The rules everyone knows. The host's real job is keeping the other tables switched on. Comment on the people, not the word: how the head of IT is trying to be "budget", how his whole table is already on its feet, how the neighbours are whispering hints nobody asked for.
The second job is fairness. When a table shouts twenty answers at once, you decide, and fast. My rule is simple: I count the first answer I hear in full. Say it at the start and there are no arguments.
After charades: a louder cousin
If the room loved charades, the next thing to try is fake karaoke. A guest sings along to a track, the platform records only their voice, and then the music drops out and the room hears what really happened. Same spirit as charades: the performance matters more than the talent.
What you need on the night
A laptop, a projector or big TV, and your word list. Charades itself runs without guests' phones, so the signal in the hall doesn't matter for the basic game.
The guest camera is different: it streams from a guest's phone, so that phone needs a solid internet connection. Test it before the round. The same goes for any game played from phones; there is no offline mode for those.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, a host who has run weddings, company parties and birthdays since 2014: more than 500 events, and TOP 100 Awards best host in Moscow (2024) and Saint Petersburg (2023). He built the console for his own events first.
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How to run charades on screen for a large group
- 1
Choose the theme and prepare a word list, or use the built-in words.
- 2
Split the room into teams by table and set up the team scoreboard.
- 3
Connect the laptop to the projector and check the on-screen timer.
- 4
Before each round, show the word to the actor on your phone remote, not on the stage.
- 5
Run the timer, let the actor play for their own table, and add points after each round.
- 6
End with a timed final round and the awards on the team scoreboard.
FAQ
Do guests need their phones for charades?
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See also
Run brighter events — with PULTEVENT
All audience interactions, a second screen and timing in one app. Guests join by QR — internet is needed for you and for them.
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