Are you looking for teamwork games that bring smiles to everyone in a gym or event hall? Games that sometimes call for coordination with teammates and other times let you enjoy a sense of unity are essential for strengthening the bonds within an organization.
In this feature, we’ll introduce cooperative indoor games that anyone can join with ease.
These games have simple rules but offer full participation, new discoveries, and a real sense of achievement.
Try them out to help create a positive atmosphere for your group!
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Cooperative games that are easy to play indoors (1–10)
cooperative game
It’s an analog, but teamwork-testing, cooperative game where you reconnect cut pieces of paper back to their original form.
Since a fragment you have might fit perfectly with a part someone else is assembling, the key is to keep communicating as you play.
If you’re playing with a large group, it could be exciting to form teams and set a time limit.
With a time limit in place, the whole team will be able to unite and play the game as one.
Let’s draw a picture together!
Even a picture you can draw smoothly on your own becomes very difficult when everyone tries to draw with a single pen.
You might wonder how everyone can use one pen, but you wrap strings around the pen, spread them out like rays, and everyone holds a string.
You move the pen by pulling the strings, but unless everyone matches their strength and the direction they pull, you can’t draw clean lines.
If even one person pulls too hard, the pen can tip over, so it’s quite a challenging group activity.
Try it with simple drawings or letters first!
Straw Tower
Form a team of 4 to 5 people and build a tower using straws.
All you need are desks, chairs, and straws, making this an easy game to boost teamwork.
You can use the straws however you like—stack them one by one, or create shapes with the straws and pile those up.
Discuss as a team and figure out how to build the tallest tower!
shooting star
It’s a team recreation activity: a drawing game where participants create pictures based on several prompts given by a host, without seeing what others are drawing.
Using prompts like “shooting star,” “moon,” and “house,” everyone draws with their own composition and scale, and you enjoy comparing the differences and individuality in their drawings.
It’s a fun way to discover new aspects of each team member’s personality.
paper tower
Using a fixed amount of paper or newspaper, teams build a tower.
The team that builds the tallest tower wins.
In the first half, you discuss what kind of structure to make; in the second half, you actually build it.
If you don’t plan your time and roles, you won’t finish within the time limit, so it’s a game that tests a team’s planning and execution skills.
It’s often used in training sessions as well.
Teleportation Game
Introducing a recreation activity that mobilizes all your reflexes: the “Teleportation Game,” using just newspaper! Each participant holds one rolled-up newspaper stick and stands in a circle.
At the signal, let go of your own stick, quickly move to your neighbor’s spot, and catch their stick before it falls.
If you grab it before it hits the ground, you succeed; if you fail, you’re out.
It demands sharp judgment and quick movement—simple yet packed with thrills.
The tense atmosphere and the focus on competing with yourself become increasingly addictive.
As long as you have newspaper, you can start right away, making it perfect for indoor activities and icebreakers.
Drawing Telephone Game
The typical game of telephone involves whispering the given phrase from one person to the next to see if the message is accurately conveyed to the last person.
In the drawing version of telephone, however, this is done not with words but literally with illustrations.
The first person looks at the prompt and expresses it as a drawing; the second person then guesses the prompt based on the first person’s drawing and creates their own drawing—and so on.
Because you infer the previous person’s intent from the features of their illustration, it’s a perfect game for building communication.
