Pictionary is a super simple game that only requires pen, paper and the board game Pictionary which provides you with the game board, a timer, two dice and cards with words on them.

The aim of Pictionary is to guess what the drawer, who is drawing words from a list of cards. Once you guess correctly, you can advance across the game board and the first to reach the end wins!

How to Play Pictionary Online

The Pictionary board game is a great way to play in person, but what if you want to play a drawing game online with your friends, family or coworkers? Luckily there’s a way to play a similar drawing game online that’s completely free!

Want to play Pictionary Online? Try Draw It

Draw It is a game designed to let you express your artistic side with anyone in the world. The rules are even more simple than Pictionary. Guess the word the drawer is drawing, and score points the quicker you get it right. All the words and scoring is taken care of automatically, and it works just as well on desktop (use your mouse to draw) or your mobile phone (use your finger to draw). The best part? It’s completely free! Try it out the next time you feel like playing a drawing game.

Board setup:

Each player places a token on the start square. Give each player some paper and pen, and a category card.

There are four categories:

All Play (AP) where any word or expression can be used

Difficult (D) where the words are a bit harder than usual

Actions (A) for verbs

Object (O) for nouns

Note: If a little triangle (△) appears next to the word on a card, it is automatically an AP category.

Bonus tip: Don’t have the board game or have played all the words already? Check out our list of Pictionary words, they’re sorted by EASY, MEDIUM and HARD, so you will never run out of ideas.

Playing Pictionary:

Now everyone should be ready. Choose one player on your team to be the first drawer and roll dice to see which team goes first. The highest roll gets to pick a card from the deck and the AP category is chosen for everybody to guess. Once the card is drawn, the Drawer has 5 seconds before they must begin to sketch.

Once 5 seconds are up, the time is set to 1 minute and the drawer sketches their words.

Note: A sketch can not include letters or numbers.

All players then guess in the first round and have 1 minute to do so. The team that guesses correctly first then gets to roll a die and advance the corresponding amount of squares. They now switch drawers and draw a card. The category they must draw should correspond to the color square they are on. The new drawer has 5 seconds to think / prepare and 1 minute to sketch.

In this and all consequent rounds, only teammates guess the clue. If the team guesses correctly, they may roll the dice again and advance to a new square. This happens until the team guesses incorrectly, then a new team gets to play. This new team begins by drawing a card and beginning a new round of the sketch and guess process. The first team to the finish square wins the entire game.

Do's and Don'ts

you CAN...

  • Draw anything related to the word, no matter how tenuous the (ink
  • Break words down into a number of syllables
  • Draw "dock" for "doc", or "flu" for "flue", etc.

you CANNOT…

  • Use "ears" for "sounds like" or dashes to show the number of letters in the word
  • Use letters or numbers
  • Speak to your teammates
  • Use sign language

Want more Pictionary words?

Now that you know the rules to playing Pictionary, you may be looking for more tools to help you get started. You'll definitely want to check out our handy Pictionary Word Generator, which spits out easy, medium and hard Pictionary words. Choose the difficulty that best suits your skill level. It's the perfect tool for any drawing guessing game.

That's all you need to know to get started playing Pictionary. So go bust out the pen and paper and have some old fashioned, creative fun.

If you need more of an excuse to get drawing, be sure to check out our Ultimate List of Things to Draw.