Best 50 virtual icebreaker games for remote teams

Searching for interesting, fun-filled, and engaging virtual icebreaker games for your team? Here is a list of best 50 virtual icebreaker games for remote teams. Read on!

What are virtual icebreaker games?

Instilling a sense of belonging and fostering a feeling of harmony are now the main objectives of companies promoting a remote or virtual mode of employment. A prominent method leveraged by companies, to encourage interactions and interpersonal relationships, is to conduct virtual icebreaker games among the employees.

Conducting ice breakers games online and fun virtual activities are gaining importance due to the immense benefits achieved in generating team bonding. Remote employees can overcome the feeling of isolation and loneliness through virtual icebreaker games.

They feel motivated and inspired to work toward the company’s goals and objectives. The virtual group activities are conducted online through audio and video conference calls and meetings.

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Benefits of virtual icebreaker games in team building

Virtual ice breakers are an efficient mechanism to encourage greater interactions, and collaborations among the teams located remotely at their home or in a co-working space. Let us understand the key benefits of virtual icebreaker games,

1. Introducing the new employees inducted into a company through interactive ice breaker games; wherein the participants share their interests, experience, the region where they belong, culture, language, etc.
2. A powerful mode to assist employees working remotely overcome the sense of anonymity and isolation through icebreaker and team building activities
3. Provide opportunities to share knowledge and experience on a particular subject, domain or technology; thus enhancing the competency level of the participants
4. Help to increase the motivational and inspirational level to work within a team by supporting and learning from each other; through best online icebreakers games and activities
5. Opportunity for the employees to know each other’s expertise on any domain or technology through virtual team building icebreakers games; generating greater communication and collaboration in future as a team

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Top 10 ice breakers game online

Here goes a list of the top 10 icebreaker games online which you can organize for employees in different roles.

1. Two Truths and a Lie – One of the good online icebreakers games, enabling employees to know each other. Each participant is asked to come up with two true facts about themselves and a false one. Others have to guess among the three which is true and which is false.
2. Dumb Charades – Call a person and provide him or her with a word to act without speaking only using sign languages. Others need to guess the word.
3. Have You Ever – All participants need to hold their five fingers up. Questions will be asked for example “Have you ever tripped in front of your supervisor?” If you have then the participant needs to lift a finger.
4. Find 10 Common Things – Divide the participants into groups and ask each group to find out 10 things that are common to all. They can interact separately by asking questions, gathering information and then share with all.
5. One word Icebreaker game – This is a group icebreakers online game where each group is provided with a question to answer. The answer has to be in only one word.
6. Desert Island Scenario – An intelligent game where the team is segregated into groups. Each group is provided with 7 objects. They are asked to imagine being stranded in a desert where they can only select 3 among the 7.
7. The Hot Seat – In this game, one person is placed at the hot seat virtually. Others are free to ask any question, provided it is not too personal or controversial.
8. Peek into the house – Each team member shares a video of their house and others are asked to guess the items inside the house. One of the popular icebreakers for virtual meetings generates some action and movements during the sessions.
9. Building a story – One person initiates the starting line of the story and the second line as incomplete. The next person completes the second line and the third line as incomplete. The chain continues until a story is formed.
10. Guess the Emoji – Here each person has to guess the emojis being used majorly by other members. The participant who guesses the maximum is declared the winner.

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Top 10 opening activity for meeting

In this section, we will focus on the top 10 opening activity for meeting that can be performed virtually,

1. Encouraging the participants to share the menu they had for breakfast or lunch depending on the time of the meeting. You can even ask them to share a video of the cooking.
2. Conduct a short 5 mins rapid fire quiz session to energize them for the meeting. For better participation, you can assign brownie points or small giveaways for the winner.
3. Ask every team member to draw a self-portrait of them and display it to everyone, to create some humor. The person can also be encouraged to explain the portrait.
4. Tell all the participants to keep their video on and not to smile for the first 5 minutes of the session. It will eventually result in laughter by a majority of the participants.
5. Each of the team members can be asked to show a live picture or video of their workstation. Everyone then needs to list out the objects noted in the workstations
6. Inform everyone before the meeting starts to prepare their favorite beverage and pour it in their favorite colored cup. The objective is to find out like-minded people.
7. Each participant is provided with a chance to speak one sentence about their immediate supervisor
8. One person can be selected as the anchor whose favorite color or hobby needs to be guessed by others by asking questions
9. A 2 to 3 minutes slot is provided to each member to come up with a movie brief they would like to make. They can even provide names of their select actors and actresses for the movie.
10. Each one needs to come up with a problem or issue prevailing in the office and provide a solution.

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Top 10 virtual group activities

The top 10 virtual icebreaker activities that can be conducted in groups are elaborated below,

1. Share a problem with each group and ask them to prepare a speech for the press conferences or releases
2. Provide a scenario of aliens that have landed on earth who do not speak English. Ask each group to describe the company or a building using only emojis
3. Ask each group to design a brand logo for the company and the rationale behind it
4. Conduct a debate between the groups on a specific topic related to science, current news, etc.
5. Each group can be asked to imagine a fictional scientific discovery and elaborate the same
6. Provide a sketch of a person to any one member of the group. Then ask the person to describe the face to the other members to draw and sketch.
7. Divide into groups and provide them with a situation like theft or robbery etc. with clues to resolve the mystery
8. Ask each group to select a book of their choice to provide a detailed review of the book
9. Provide an interesting topic to each group, ask them to prepare a presentation and share it with all.
10. One of the interesting group virtual icebreaker games can be assigning each group to prepare an animation pixel art in spreadsheets

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Top 10 fun virtual activities

The top 10 fun virtual ice breaker activities are elaborated below,

1. Create an online interactive world map with each participant pinning their respective location
2. The photo challenge is one of the interactive virtual icebreaker games where you provide employees with a caption and ask them to share photographs related to it
3. Guessing each other’s personality and interests through live interactive quiz sessions
4. Offering virtual tours of exotic travel destinations in the world by imagining walking along the roads or even riding a bike
5. Scavenger Hunt is one of the fun-filled virtual icebreaker games where you provide a list of items to the participants to fetch from their house within a specified time and then show everyone on the webcam
6. You can ask each participant to draw a picture and ask others to guess it. Brownie points can be assigned to one who guesses maximum correctly
7. Preparing bingo cards with multiple personality characteristics written on them. Hand over to the participants and then randomly call out the characteristics. The one who can relate the maximum to themselves wins
8. Place a question starting with “What you would do… ?” and have fun listening to the answers from all
9. Ask each team member to share photos of their childhood
10. Ask the participants to share funny pictures with their pets

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Best 10 minute ice breakers

The best 10 minute ice breakers are illustrated below for your quick reference,

1. Word chain game, where you need to choose a category say names of cities. The first person names a city, the second person repeats and adds his or her choice of city and the chain goes on
2. Provide a paper to each participant and ask them to divide it into 4 boxes. Ask them to draw 4 pictures that describe themselves and then present them to all
3. Ask each participant to create a flag describing their first interest in life and then explain to all
4. Before the meeting ask the participants to be prepared with Lego blocks. In the meeting ask them to prepare a symbol with the Lego blocks representing the company’s brand
5. Provide an online jigsaw puzzle to resolve in 10 minutes
6. Provide a tagline and ask each person to prepare an ad campaign based on it
7. Provide a starting line of a story and ask the participants to create a short story
8. Conduct rapid fire quiz sessions for 10 minutes
9. You can ask each member to showcase their talent in 10 minutes like a song, dance, playing a musical instrument etc.
10. Live brewing sessions, preparing tea or coffee in the respective kitchens of the participants

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Top 10 leadership ice breaker games

In this section, we will discuss the top 10 leadership meeting ice breakers,

1. Each participant is allowed to select one alphabet and describe themselves with 5 to 10 words starting with the alphabet
2. You can select some random letters and display them. Ask the participants to create as many words using the letters
3. Conduct a riddle session where everyone needs to think and answer, one of the interesting and interactive leadership ice breaker games
4. Ask each person to select any item on their work desk and sell it to the other participants
5. Prepare a theme for the meetings and ask the leadership team to dress up as per the theme
6. Ask the participants to prepare a tagline on the company’s future 5 to 10 years down the line
7. Prepare an online achievements book and ask the employees to contribute pictures and write-ups on the awards and accolades earned for a collage
8. Conduct a friendly debate on breaking news related to technology or an innovation
9. Ask the participants to discover 10 things that are common to all
10. You can ask the participants to bring in any object that describes their leadership skill and explain to all

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Famous virtual icebreaker software

To conduct virtual team building icebreakers or free icebreaker games, it is important to select the right software. Enlisted below are the tools and software best suited to conduct ice breaker games for meeting adults and the youth,

1. unremot.com offers virtual watercooler provision to promote real office-like social interactions, enhancing team bonding, conduct social, fun, and gossip chats allowing unlimited users and unlimited spaces
2. TINYpulse, a leading engagement platform
3. Zoom, providing virtual breakout rooms and online interactions
4. G Suite offered by Google to engage in real-time conversations
5. Workplace from Facebook for faster engagement and communication
6. Donut, providing virtual coffee breaks and employee engagement
7. Quizbreaker, for scheduling quizzes for employees virtually
8. Online puzzles and word scrambles

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