How to play Drift
It made sense at the beginning.
Play DriftA phrase goes round the room
Drift is a game of drawing and guessing in a chain. Everybody writes a phrase. The next person draws it. The person after that sees only the drawing and writes what they think it shows, and the next person draws that. The chain keeps going until it has passed through every player.
Then everyone watches each chain replay from the beginning, one step at a time, to see how the original phrase changed as it passed between players.
It is for four to eight players and takes fifteen to thirty-five minutes, longer with more people.
Starting a chain
Every round, each player starts a chain with a phrase of their own. Anything goes, as long as somebody could try to draw it.
You see only the step just before yours: the drawing you have to guess, or the guess you have to draw. You see where the chain started only at the reveal.
Drawing skill does not matter. Nothing in the game scores a drawing, and a rough one often changes a chain more than a careful one.
A round
Everyone works on a different chain at the same time, so nobody waits for a turn. A round has one step per player, and a game is three rounds.
The steps take turns: a drawing, then a guess, then a drawing. You draw with a finger or a mouse, with a few tip sizes, any colour you like and an undo that goes all the way back to a blank page. Each step waits until everyone has finished.
The reveal and the vote
At the end of each round, the host plays every chain back from the first phrase to the last, and the whole room watches together.
After each chain the room votes on whether it survived. If most say yes, everyone who worked on the chain gets 2 points. A tied vote counts as no.
If it did not survive, everyone votes for the best swerve along the way, and the player who made it gets 3 points. The player who wrote the first phrase cannot win that vote.
After three rounds, the most points wins.
A cat driving a bus
Four players. Ayşe starts a chain with a cat driving a bus.
Kemal draws it: a round cat at a steering wheel, inside a long box with wheels and windows that he means as a bus. The cat's ears come out small.
Sam sees only Kemal's drawing. The box with windows looks like a carriage, and the ears look like a dog's. Sam writes a dog on a train.
Lena draws a dog leaning out of a train window, waving. The chain has been through everyone, so it goes back to Ayşe.
At the reveal, everyone watches the chain step by step. Did it survive? Kemal votes yes, convinced the drawing still looks like his cat, while the other three vote no, so it did not. In the vote for the best swerve, Ayşe and Lena pick Sam's dog on a train and Sam picks Lena's wave. Sam gets 3 points.
Making a chain worth watching
Choose phrases that describe a clear action or scene. They give the next player concrete details to draw, unlike abstract words such as happiness.
When you draw, spend your effort on the action. The subject is usually easy to guess; what it is doing is where chains change direction.
When you guess, write what is on the page. A man holding a fish is a man holding a fish, even if you suspect it began as a job interview.
Both outcomes can score well. A chain that survives gives 2 points to everyone in it, while a broken chain gives 3 points to the player responsible for the winning swerve.
Draw big. Your drawing will be read on a phone, and small details disappear.