Hot Mic

Everyone plays as a little flame. You each get a prompt and record it alone in your own booth, as many takes as it takes.

Then the tapes roll one at a time with no names on them, and you each pick a favourite. When the votes are in, they flip over and you find out who made which noise.

Free to play

Four ways to play, three rounds a game, for up to four players.

• Mimic: give it a voice. Usually it's a face, but it could be a dog or a teapot.
• Soundalike: copy a sound. The game makes up a new one every round, and a lot of them are gibberish.
• Animal Noises: make its noise, no words. Moo, bark or hoot, depending on what's in the picture.
• Doodle: draw for each other, then give the drawing you get a voice.

VIP: the full game

If anyone in the lobby has VIP, the whole table plays the full game: room for 8, your own pictures as prompts, up to twelve rounds a game, every face, hat and fire for your flame, and fifteen more modes. Turn on as many modes as you like and every round draws one.

• Tongue Twister: say it once, fast. You only see it a moment before the mic opens.
• Ghostwriter: write lines for each other, then perform the one you're handed.
• Voiceover: read the line. You get a picture and the words to put in its mouth.
• Backwards: say it backwards. Your take is played in reverse, so it has to go in backwards to come out right.
• Copycat: copy the take you hear, and find out at the end how far it drifted.
• Story: tell a story, one line each. You hear the story so far before you add yours.
• Odd One Out: find who has no picture. One of you is bluffing.
• Caption This: title each other's takes, without ever seeing the picture.
• Director: act it out, from a direction like "A very nervous pilot".
• Two Speakers: read a two-line scene in pairs, a part each.
• Impressions: sound like another player at the table.
• Same Line: everybody says the same line, in the voice of their own picture.
• Disguise: every take goes through the same filter, then you guess whose is whose.
• Which Picture?: voice one of the pictures on the wall, and the others guess which.
• Answer First: answer a question only you can see, and the next player works out what was asked.

What else

• Talk to each other in the lobby and between rounds (but not in the booths).
• Choose a colour, a face and a hat for your flame, which grows the more you score.
• Save the best takes as short videos to share (as audio on Mac and Linux).
• Over 2,500 works of real public-domain art, some of it thousands of years old.
• With VIP, everyone can bring up to 40 pictures of their own, and the host deals them out as prompts.
• A microphone is required. A headset helps.