21 Kickass Virtual Team Building Activities and Games for 2024

Cassy Aite
February 7, 2024
21 Kickass Virtual Team Building Activities and Games for 2024

Several years removed from the pandemic, many workers have moved back to the office. However, statistics indicate that 12.7% of workers still work from home, while 28.2% have a hybrid work arrangement. Though these figures pale in comparison to pandemic-era numbers, virtual team building activities are still as important in 2024 as at any other time in the history of business.

Building team camaraderie is one of the key tenets of remote work, but it’s certainly no cakewalk. Your remote team members might have never met before, which can cause feelings of loneliness and isolation, negatively impacting productivity and morale.

However, virtual team building and bonding activities are fun ways to strengthen interpersonal relationships, reinforce company culture, boost morale, promote work-life balance, and remove isolation from the remote work equation.

Though you might use video call solutions like Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, or Microsoft Teams, creating exciting team-building activities for your virtual office isn’t easy. But with some creativity, regular get-togethers, and a proactive plan, you can forge team connections and employee engagement that transcend time zones or the office.

Why Virtual Team Building Activities Are Important

The best virtual team building activities are sources of entertainment and a way to foster camaraderie and interaction between your team, yet they have several other benefits to consider. When you introduce virtual team building activities, you gain advantages in the remote workplace, including:

  • Improved communication
  • Better team collaboration and cohesion
  • Boosts to productivity as remote workers learn to work together as a team
  • Opportunities to check in with your employees
  • Trust between management and the team or from worker to worker
  • Improved mental well-being, a boost to morale, and lower stress
  • Happier employees and chances to reduce employee turnover

The 21 Best Virtual Team Building Games and Activities

Woman in the middle of a virtual team building activity.

One of the most intriguing facets of virtual team building activities is that there’s a seemingly endless supply of options available to you. If you want something easy to set up and low-key, you have that option. Or if you want to go all out on an event, that’s always possible.

The key is to find an activity that speaks to your team’s interests, promotes participation and engagement, and ultimately, creates a happier workforce — all while mimicking an in-person setting.

‍1. Sing Your Heart Out In Karaoke

Whether you’re celebrating birthdays or helping the team unwind on a Friday night, you can’t really go wrong with karaoke. These real-time aural sessions are simple to set up and let everyone express themselves without restrictions.

Ask participants to pick a song and get its corresponding karaoke backing track. During the session, only the singer will keep their mic on as others enjoy the music — or you can have your whole team sing along.

Creating a karaoke playlist and looking for recommendations? Check out some of the top plays on Spotify or check out a few of our favorites:

  • Sweet Child O’ Mine - Guns N’ Roses
  • Zombie - The Cranberries
  • Someone Like You - Adele
  • Dancing Queen - Abba
  • Hey Jude - The Beatles (Technically, you can’t go wrong with any Beatles song.)
  • I Want It That Way - Backstreet Boys
  • Wonderwall - Oasis
  • Take Me Home, Country Roads - John Denver

But no matter your choice, the idea is to foster a more entertaining work environment and take the mundane out of your average workday.

2. Host a Virtual Scavenger Hunt

A scavenger hunt is a popular virtual team building game that needs no introduction. While you can use team chat apps like Slack or extensions like Donut to post photos to the clues, we recommend using a video chat app for a better experience.

The rules for this virtual game are simple: the first person to find the item gets a point, and the highest scorer on the leaderboard wins the game.

Start the hunt by giving the clues. The item they have to find is irrelevant and random. The participants only need to show the item on the screen to score points.

Here are a few examples of items you can ask:

  • Childhood/high school/teenage photo
  • Favorite book
  • Spatula
  • Screwdriver
  • View from the window

This fun team activity works with both small and large groups, so don’t feel deterred if you have to entertain a sizable amount of people. Anything that can break away from work-related conversations and introduce team bonding is always a positive.

3. Exercise Creativity Through a Virtual Improv Session

Woman meditating in workout clothes during a virtual team building activity

Improvisation isn’t an innate skill, but it’s certainly a virtual activity that lets individuals exercise their creative muscles. Here are two example improv exercises you can try:

  • Hype Person: In this game, the first person mentions a routine activity they did, and the next two people exaggerate the impact of the activity or the scene. For example, if a salesperson says, “I received a client email at 7 in the morning,” the hype person can say, “Did you hear that? They don’t need to get in touch with clients. Clients contact them!”
  • ELI5: Ever visit the “Explain like I’m 5” SubReddit? Ask team members to describe a simplified version of a concept they know or are passionate about so that even a 5-year-old can understand it. You can add restrictions like only using three words or emojis. This is an awesome virtual team building activity to improve communication skills within your team.

Improv also works as a viable, atypical, and entertaining alternative to virtual icebreaker questions and tedious video conference calls.

4. Host an Online Office Olympics

Popularized on the hit TV show “The Office,” Office Olympics are a favorite virtual team building activity of many remote workers. Thanks to the energetic environment and some friendly competition, your employees will grow more comfortable in each other’s company, ultimately bolstering employee engagement.

The remote nature of this virtual team building activity may seem difficult to overcome, but even a quick brainstorm over a coffee break can give you plenty of competitive options. Create small groups to play spirited online games, fast-paced trivia games with various trivia questions, or icebreaker games. You can even use other virtual team building activities from this list — you only need to assign points to each one to determine a victor.

At the closing ceremonies, add the points on the virtual whiteboard and declare your gold, silver, and bronze medalists.

5. Employee Virtual Wellness Sessions

As the name implies, the remote workers’ wellness session consists of various health and wellness activities. The session usually starts with an icebreaker followed by a guide sharing their insights on the topic and giving some exercises.

For instance, a mindfulness session might begin with a five-minute guided meditation. As the actual session begins, the expert will explain the concept of mindfulness, its benefits, and how you can practice it. The expert will also share a handful of tactics, such as how to control the team meeting or interview jitters through belly breathing.

Consider the following employee wellness topics:

  • Practicing “deep work
  • Desk stretching for healthy posture
  • Mental health
  • Financial wellness
  • New habit creation
  • Yoga and other low to moderate-intensity exercises

6. Engage Them with Lunch Roulette

Lunch roulette on Slack

After the pandemic, the watercooler culture where employees got together to randomly chit-chat has (nearly) become ancient history— that’s unless you get more deliberate about it and leverage it as yet an online team building exercise.

How? Through Lunch Roulette!

Lunch Roulette is a popular Slack extension that automatically pairs colleagues in a separate Slack channel to plan a 30-minute video call together. Think of it as a virtual coffee or lunch setting where they can talk about anything besides work. From sports talk to impromptu book clubs, Lunch Roulette is a virtual event that has plenty of interactive opportunities for your remote employees.

7. Play Classic Games

If you have a team that’s averse to a full-on Olympics or don’t have the time to hold an event of that magnitude, you can still stick to classic games for your next virtual team building event.

Using video-conferencing tools, create a face-to-face forum that allows teams to connect and play classic games like Pictionary, Charades, Two Truths and One Lie, and Guess Who. You can also improvise and create your own online version of popular game shows like Virtual Show and Tell and Jeopardy!, among others.

8. Bring Out Your Team’s Artistic Side Via a DIY Craft Challenge

In the DIY craft challenge, everyone on the team gets 30 minutes to build something with items available at home. You can set the ground rules, such as building something using cutlery or penning a poem.

Keep the challenge simple during this virtual meeting, considering some team members are not as naturally artsy as others. As a confidence booster, provide some tutorial videos to help them get started.

You can also “Bob Rossify” this activity by letting an artist teach a simple craft. Send team members a Hoppier spending card to buy a list of items required for the session and let the artist guide the team through the session.

9. Host a Miniature Campfire

Virtual campfire with nine workers

Sorry to say, but actual campfires in your virtual workspace aren’t a great idea. But you can still have fun using the same idea.

Miniature campfires allow you to do all the fun activities virtually, sans the actual campfire. Instead, you can light up a candle, crank up the thermostat, get some classic s'mores, and indulge in live performances, ghost stories, and games.

10. Play Virtual Scattergories

Scattergories is a popular board game that combines categories and creativity, making it the perfect workout for the brain. They promote creative thinking by compelling players to name objects within a set of categories, given an initial letter, within a time limit. Although the game is meant for groups of two to six people, you can create breakout rooms or play the game in teams of up to six people.

The moderator or facilitator of this fun game shares the interface of Scattergories through their screen, which the participants can refer to. The round ends after two minutes, participants share their answers via messaging or a group chat, and the moderator will assign the scores following the game rules.

11. Get Adventurous In Virtual Escape Rooms

Virtual escape rooms are perfect for improving team collaboration and camaraderie. In these games, teams use their problem-solving skills to break out of a cabin, find a treasure chest, or reclaim their kingdom within the given time limit.

Some of the most famous virtual escape rooms are inspired by Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, and other pop-culture icons.

12. Indulge In Virtual Tasting Experiences

Virtual wine tasting experience with employees

Whether you work in a small team of five members or bigger teams of 100+, curated virtual tasting experiences or a virtual happy hour are among the most engaging remote team building activities.

Attendees try assorted wines, cheese, chocolate, etc., with tasting notes and suggested food combinations. An expert explains the production process of each good, what makes each product unique, and how to taste them for a truly exquisite session.

Virtual tasting experiences usually run for about an hour. Afterward, a pub trivia session is a fun way to end this virtual team building activity on a high note.

13. Spice Things Up With Murder Mysteries

If you want to steer away from typical office games, try murder mysteries to engage the crime junkies on your team. Think Clue or “Murder on the Orient Express” as your muses.

Our favorite games are Murder in Ancient Egypt, Blood, Gold, and a Night of Jazz, and Clue Virtual Murder Mystery, which are packed with mystery and have loads of fun puzzles and challenges.

14. Create Accountability Groups

People stick to their habits if they work in groups. This is where teamwork and accountability are effective. Many times, people set fitness goals but don't follow through. In such cases, forming an accountability group of people working on the same goal is helpful.

Set monthly health and wellness goals and track them daily using a shared spreadsheet. The goals could be as simple as drinking eight glasses of water, walking 10,000 steps, or more complex goals such as lifting weights three times per week.

Introduce rewards to make this virtual team building activity more competitive. Since everyone has different fitness levels and goals, creating breakout groups can help like-minded people work together.

15. Geography Challenge

Map of the world

If you have a globally distributed team, your staff may not know much about each other’s countries or current living arrangements. To learn a bit more about each other while injecting an element of competition, try a fun remote team building activity like Geography Challenge (or a similar name you create on your own).

In this virtual team building game, you post an online map on a shared screen and split into two teams. Each team is then asked to answer various questions, such as “Can you name all the capitals on this map?” or “Can you name all the U.S. state capitals?” Create a map and questions of your own that pertain to your staff members. By doing so, you create an exciting game that allows people to learn more about each other’s homes and origins.

16. Team Bridge

Devising a game once a month can feel cumbersome if you’re swamped. So if you want several virtual team building games, check out Team Bridge. Log onto the site and create an account. Once you have the account, choose the game you want and invite your staff to join — all on the same interface.

With games like Pictionary,  Codenames, Two Truths and a Lie, and others, Team Bridge takes the guesswork out of crafting your own virtual team building games.

17. Debate Team

You don’t have to be a thespian or an orator to become a successful part of a debate team — you only need a strong opinion and the creativity and persuasiveness to vocalize it.

Enter the world of Debate Team. In this virtual team building game, two teams take each side of a polarizing topic and then try to convince the others to switch sides. (Alternatively, you can choose the winner.)

Some great yet light-hearted topics might include:

  • Is winter or summer the better month?
  • Would you rather have $10 million and pass away or live forever?
  • Does pineapple have a rightful place on pizza?

18. Guess the Song

Guessing a song by hearing it is a simple exercise. But what if you spoke the opening lyrics to a song and let teams guess? Suddenly, this virtual team building game suddenly got a bit more interesting.

To start, choose a genre of music or another hint — such as all bands starting with the same letter. Then, say (don’t sing) the opening lyrics to the song. Give teams about 30 seconds to guess before moving on to the next. Each team gets one point for the correct band and one point for the correct artist. The team with the most points wins this exciting and competitive remote team building activity.

19. Mashups

Taken from the famed Jeopardy! game show, Mashups is a virtual team building game that asks teams to combine two clues into a single phrase that shares a word or phrase.

Some examples would include:

  • Clue: Movie where Lester Burnham locks up Belle, who eventually finds an enchanted rose. Answer: American Beauty and the Beast
  • Clue: John Q actor is honored with a 554-foot obelisk. Answer: Denzel Washington Monument
  • Clue: Latitude line separating North Korea and South Korea is also a gymnastics event. Answer: 38th parallel bars

You get the idea. Come up with your own clues, or use YouTube to find old Jeopardy! before and after clues.

20. Guess the Emoji Phrase

Another awesome virtual team building game that combines modernism with classic guessing games is “Guess the Emoji Phrase.” Using emojis, you can build a common saying, phrase, or movie title. Contestants or teams can then answer on the fly. The first team to answer correctly gets the points, and the team with the most points wins this online team building game.

21. Jackbox

Popularized on PlayStation and PC, Jackbox is a set of games that involve up to eight people. These aren’t like any other board games or game shows, although they still require creativity, a sense of humor, and the will to win. And with 11 Jackbox Party Packs to choose from, you can find the perfect game to suit your team’s tastes.

Bring Your Virtual Team Building Activity All Together

Building a cohesive team takes a lot of work, but it doesn’t have to be a drag. You can quickly boost engagement and productivity by introducing these virtual team building activities and hosting them regularly.

Another bonus is that all of these activities have great flexibility. For instance, you can use the improv session as an icebreaker and continue with the other virtual team building ideas. You can choose the format that fits your team's and team members’ personalities.

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Try out some of these activities in your next virtual team building session, and let us know how it went!

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