1. As much as possible, eliminate waiting for someone to take a turn
   • Downtime is the enemy
   • Party games want to support 5+ players; so the common board game structure of "one person takes their turn, everyone else waits" scales very badly
   • Examples: Restructuring Incrypt, Pairwise
2. Use timers to keep the game moving along
   • Analysis paralysis is no fun for people
   • Again, downtime is the enemy
   • (Maybe tie in to mod controls)
3. Fast feedback in-game
   • Basic UI principle: when players interact with something, it should be obviously interacted
   • Ties into "juice"
   • Example: Buttons should show "submitted"
   • Example: Telling people when the word they're typing is invalid (even before submission)
4. Provide a shared board
   • In an online setting, players have much less context of what each other is doing or looking at
   • Example: Showing who has submitted and who has not yet in the UI
5. Design to allow players to join and leave in-game

   • Party games are often played as an "appetizer" or "dessert" to a longer game night

     So players might be trickling in or trying to leave.

   • Short rounds (back to fast feedback) are the easiest way to make this happen

   • Don't require a ton of context or score tracking

   • Example: Good: Just One; Codenames. Bad: Incrypt

6. Optimize the new player experience
   • There's much less patience for learning a party game; no reading through a thick manual or spending 30 minutes explaining how to play
   • Example: reducing all the friction to join a room
   • Identify what the player should be paying attention to
   • Example: Using white background when player has to input a decision
7. Make player choices matter
   • Party games should be uniquely driven by each player
     • Example: One Word, anyone can affect the words by picking a bad one
   • Everyone should have the opportunity to lob in a joke
8. It's all about the story
   • What will people remember from the gameplay experience? Usually not who won, but what they joked and laughed about
   • Example: Company game when someone random joined, and we played with a rando Sam, and then tried to recruit them in the end through a clue

Other tips

• Reversible actions — allowing people to undo and redo
• Mod controls — progressing the game if it's stuck or not fun