How to host a game night

An evening with SoyTaboo does not need a board, tokens or an account per person. It needs a phone with battery, a room where people can hear each other and an order so the explanation does not eat the first hour. This guide is that order. The rules of each mode are in Taboo and Time Trial. If the group is a family, a class, an office or a birthday, the finer settings are in ideas by occasion.

Before anyone arrives

Open soytaboo.com on the phone you will use and confirm that cards load. You need a connection at that moment. If the home screen opens and you can reach the category screen, the test is enough: you do not have to finish a solo game. Leave the language selected. Changing it later does not translate the cards of a game that has already started.

Charge the battery or keep a cable nearby. The screen will stay on. Lower the brightness only if it bothers people: the person watching forbidden words has to read them. Tell the household that you will speak up during turns. A game night in a whisper, with the television on, becomes a turn where nobody hears the clue.

Prepare two team nicknames, not necessarily the final ones. Avoid names of people who are not there, or details you would not want left in a record. What gets stored is described in Privacy.

The first ten minutes

Do not read both guides aloud. Read one example. The one in the Taboo guide — a word, five forbidden words, a clue that works and a clue that does not — fits in a minute. Then ask whether gestures count and whether a form of a forbidden word subtracts. Write the answer in one sentence and do not renegotiate it on the first correct guess.

Make two even teams. With four people, each team has a clue-giver and a guesser, and the waiting team checks the card. With more people, seat together the ones who need to hear each other. Someone who arrives late joins the next game, not the middle of a turn with the clock running.

Play one sixty-second practice turn and go home. That turn teaches the buttons. The practice score is not debated. If someone got stuck, the good clues guide can be read between games, not during the clock.

An order that usually works

1. Taboo, Random, one or two rounds, sixty seconds. The group learns the pace without a category that leaves out anyone who does not know the same famous names.
2. A short pause. Water, a new clue-giver, and the question of whether the team that is behind picks the next category. That habit keeps the same person from always deciding.
3. Taboo again, with the category they asked for. If the first one was uncomfortable because of the cards, this is the moment to change, not to insist.
4. Time Trial to 15 points, if they still want to play. Explain the dice with one case: four correct answers and a two add two points. The total does not fall below zero. The target is checked when both teams have played the round.

That path fits in a relaxed hour, with talk in between. If you only have twenty minutes, stay on the first step and a single round. Stretching Time Trial to 40 points at the end of the night is the most common way to finish with one person staring at the phone and everyone else in another conversation. The target of 15 exists for that closing.

During the game

The host watches three things, not the score. That the guessing team cannot see the screen. That the waiting team is not shouting clues. That the clue-giver rotates. If the same person describes three turns in a row because it is “faster,” the others stop playing. Passing the phone is part of hosting this game.

A rules argument stops with the sentence you agreed at the start. If you did not agree, pick the simpler option in the moment — word forms subtract, gestures do not count — and leave it fixed. Common mistakes lists the doubts that return every night. You do not have to solve all of them in advance. You do have to avoid solving them twice.

If the network drops between one game and the next, do not restart the router in front of everyone for fifteen minutes. Play an oral round: someone names a word and five invented forbidden words, and the others guess. When the connection returns, open SoyTaboo again. Cards are not saved for guaranteed play without a network.

How to close

Stop while people still want one more game, not when nobody will volunteer to describe. One last short round leaves a better memory than a target of forty points you never reach. Show the score, mention one clue the group remembers and put the phone down. Going home ends the saved game. That is what you want at the end of the night: tomorrow the browser should not resume a half-finished turn.

If someone wants to host the next one, hand them this sequence, not only the link to the home screen. The game is easy to open and easy to explain badly. A person who has already seen one full evening can host the next one without you repeating the example.

To change the tone at that next gathering — no gestures, cooperative play, one word per clue — read the variants before people arrive, and announce only one. Two new variants on the same night step on each other. One, said at the start, is noticeable and can be repeated.