I first heard of the Fish Bowl game from a friend who said that she and her family would play for hours as young adults. It’s really a simple game but the laughs last for hours and you can customize it for any theme. She had a different name for the game, and I was going to call this game Three Rounds, as it is played in three rounds, but after a little research, I found that most people call it Fish Bowl.
In this post we’ll tell you how to play Fish Bowl, how to make your own, where to get seasonal themes and different variations that we found.
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What You Need For Fish Bowl
To start, you will need slips of paper, larger pieces of paper, pencils and a large Fish Bowl (hence the name) or other large container. You will also need a 30 second timer.
Setting Up Fish Bowl
To start, players need to pick a theme for the game. We’ve played with the themes of Christmas movies, Fiesta, summer and even Harry Potter.
Each player takes 10 slips of paper and writes something that matches the theme on each slip. When they have finished, the fold the slips and place them in the Fish Bowl.
We tired this method but have found some problems. First, we had several duplicates. Next, we had some trouble reading each other’s hand writing. Also, depending on how many players there are, there can be a LOT of slips to play with.
To fix this, I have made several theme lists available in the store here including summer, cottage, fiesta and camping. The lists have the amount of items that we found makes for the best game. There will be more added soon.
Playing Fish Bowl
Once all the slips of paper are in the Fish Bowl, it’s time to play. You play Fish Bowl with two teams. The teams do not need to be even.
Round One
The first round is quick draw. The first team to play, chooses a player to be the drawer. The timer is set and then this player has 30 seconds to draw as many of the slips as she can get her team to guess. The team gets one point for each correct slip.
Now it’s the second team’s turn to draw. The slips that were used, including any that were not guessed, aka the last one, are set to the side. The new drawer has 30 seconds to draw as many slips as he can get his team to draw.
Teams take turns drawing slips, changing out the drawer, until all the slips have been played.
The points are tallied and marked for the first round.
Round Two
To start the second round, you need to refold all the slips and placed back in the Fish Bowl.
The team who has the least amount of points goes first. In the second round, players will act out the items on the slips.
The first team to play will choose a player to be the actor. He now has 30 seconds to act out as many slips as he can get his team to guess.
Again, teams get one point for each correct slip that they get.
Once the first team is out of time, the second team chooses an actor and play continues.
When all of the slips have been acted out, each team gets one point for each one correctly guessed and that score gets added to the score from the first round.
Round Three
As with the second round, to start the third round, all slips need to be refolded and placed back in the Fish Bowl. Again, the team with the lowest score gets to play first.
In this round, the teams chose one player to give the clues. This player will have 30 seconds to get as many slips guessed as possible. For this round, the clue giver only has one word to describe what is on the slip. For example, if they are trying to get colouring book, she may say “crayons” and her team will have to figure out what is on the slip.
This may seem hard at first, but as this is the third time everyone is seeing the slips, it’s easier than you think—and harder.
Again, teams take turns giving clues. They get one point for each correct slip.
Winning Fish Bowl
At the end of the third round, the points are added together and the team with the most points wins.
Fish Bowl Variations
I have seen other people describing the first round as more of a Password style round where the clue giver get one word at a time to have their teammates guess the slip. Personally, I find this too similar to the last round but if that fits your family better then go for it.
Three Rounds of Fun
Like I said at the beginning of this post, we have played many different variations and we all love this game—even the family member that won’t play Pictionary. We always laugh and have a crazy good time. We also had a family member come in half way through the game, and although he didn’t understand what was happening, enjoyed watching us play. (He didn’t want to join us even though he totally could have been added into the game.) We highly recommend giving this one a try, you won’t be sorry.
If you want to try it out, pick up one of our Fish Bowl games in the store. Each one comes with the full game instructions as is the prefect way of spending a game night together—no matter what the season! Check them out here and come back to see what we add as we go!
For more crazy fun read about Like Minds, Pretend That and our Daily News Games.
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