Waterbomb

What Waterbomb is

Waterbomb is the digital version of the game everyone played as a child, passing an object around until somebody shouted “stop”. Here the object is the phone, the person shouting stop is a hidden timer, and the forfeit is not a word: it is a balloon of water that bursts and soaks the screen, running drips included.

The whole thing is three gestures. A prompt appears on screen, say a job. Whoever is holding the phone says a word that fits — “plumber” — taps Passed and hands the phone to the person next to them. The circle always turns the same way, until it bursts.

What sets it apart from the other games on this site is that it needs nothing: no board on a big screen, no device each, no room code to pass around. One phone, a circle of people, and you are playing in ten seconds.

Game details

What you need to play

• One phone, that's it. There is no board to open anywhere else. Whoever has the most battery opens the game, and that phone becomes the balloon.
• A circle of people. It doesn't have to be a table: it works standing up, on a sofa, on a beach, in a parked car. All that matters is that everybody knows who is on their left or right.
• One free hand each. It sounds like a joke, but it is the real requirement: the phone has to move fast. Whoever is holding a drink puts it down.
• No connection, after the first time. The game installs itself in the browser and starts up offline. That is why it works in a garden, which is where water balloons belong.

Setting up a game

1. Open the game Press the button above from any phone. There is no waiting: Waterbomb has nothing to wake up, which we come back to further down.
2. Type names, if you like They are only used to keep score and to name the person who just got soaked. Leave them empty and the game works the same, without a scoreboard.
3. Choose how long a round lasts Four ranges: long, right, short or roulette. It is not a countdown you will see — it is the interval the game draws a fresh duration from, every single round.
4. Choose what can come up Four groups of prompts. For a first game leave “everyday things” on and switch the spicy questions off: they are wonderful, but not with your grandmother in the room.
5. Get in a circle Agree which way the phone goes and then stick to it — unless the game itself tells you otherwise.

How a round plays out

1. The phone starts moving

Whoever begins taps the button, and from that moment the clock runs where nobody can see it. The screen shows only the prompt, a balloon that shivers, and one big button.

2. Say a word and pass

A word that fits the prompt, said out loud so everybody hears it. Then Passed, and the phone goes to the person next to you. There is no referee: if somebody repeats a word or says something that clearly doesn't fit, the table notices, and the argument is part of the game.

3. The ticking speeds up

You can hear a clock, in step with the shaking balloon. For most of the round the rhythm stays slow and tells you very little: what you hear halfway through sounds a lot like what you heard at the start. Then, in the final stretch, the ticking goes frantic — and at that point you know it is about to burst, but it is already too late to do anything except pass the phone fast.

4. Every so often the rules change

If you leave the twists on, now and then the phone stops for a second to announce something: the circle reverses and the phone goes back the other way, or this one pass costs you two words instead of one, or the prompt changes on the spot. The clock, meanwhile, keeps running.

5. It bursts

With no warning. The water starts at the centre of the screen, covers all of it, and stays there dripping until somebody taps “dry off and carry on”. Whoever was holding the phone takes the point — or goes out, if you are playing knockout.

Why the clock is hidden

This is the decision everything else is built around, so it is worth spelling out. A visible countdown turns the game into arithmetic: you watch the number, you work out whether stalling pays, and whoever holds the phone in the last three seconds knows it and plays the part. The surprise disappears — and surprise is the only thing this game has to sell.

Instead, each round's length is drawn from the range you picked, and it appears nowhere until the round is over. The ticking does know the time, and it really does accelerate up to the burst: that part you are meant to hear coming — it is the panic of the last handover, and it is the bit that makes people laugh. What the ticking will not tell you is where you are: the rhythm stays almost unchanged for the first two thirds, so hearing it slow does not tell you whether the round is ten seconds long or ninety. And so you cannot count the beats, every interval is nudged a little at random.

The practical result is that nobody can play clever. All you can do is pass quickly, which is precisely why people laugh.

The two modes

• Points. Every pass scores, and it scores for whoever got rid of the phone. A pass is worth more the longer the round runs — the first is worth 1, from the seventh it is 2, from the thirteenth 3 — because taking the phone late is the dangerous move. Get soaked and you lose the points banked in that round, not the ones from earlier hands. Most points wins.
• Knockout. Get soaked and you leave the circle. The circle tightens, passes come round faster and the tension builds itself. Last one dry wins. With more than eight people it drags a bit: play points instead.

The prompts, and how to pick them

• Everyday things. Fruit, jobs, things in a kitchen. The group that always works, with anyone, including whoever just walked in.
• Films, music, sport, the world. Light general knowledge. Raises the bar a little and rewards a table that knows each other.
• Letter games. “A word starting with Z”, “a word ending in -NESS”. These are the prompts that jam people up, and therefore the ones that burst the balloon most often.
• Spicy questions. “An excuse to stay home tonight”, “something you would never tell your in-laws”. Only among people who know each other well, and off when there are children around.

You can leave several groups on at once: the deck shuffles them together and deals them in order, without repeating the same prompt twice in one game.

Tips for a first game

• Start on the “right” range. 15 to 55 seconds: long enough for the phone to go round, short enough that nobody gets bored.
• Don't stop to think. A wrong word said instantly costs you a laugh; a perfect word said ten seconds later costs you a soaking.
• Pass with two hands. It sounds trivial, but half the soakings happen in a fumbled handover, not in the thinking.
• Turn the volume up. The ticking does half the work, and the final burst of it is what makes people jump. On silent the game still functions, but people laugh a lot less.
• Short mode is the second game, not the first. Eight seconds with people who haven't grasped the loop yet isn't exciting, it's just confusing.

The mistakes that ruin a game

• Changing direction on your own. The phone always goes the same way unless the game says otherwise. If everybody passes it wherever they fancy, the score stops meaning anything.
• Playing referee. Nobody checks the answers, and that is for the best. If a word is borderline, laugh and move on: stopping to argue hands precious seconds to whoever is holding the phone.
• Circles that are too wide. Above ten people the circle never closes and whoever is on the far side drifts off. Two games of six beat one of twelve.
• Starting with the spicy questions. They are the best group, but by the third game. On the first, nobody has realised yet that they have two seconds to answer, and a personal question under time pressure freezes anyone.

Why this game opens instantly

The other TableNight games live on a server that shuts down when nobody is playing, and the first opening of the evening can take up to a minute. Waterbomb doesn't, for a simple reason: the server has nothing to do here. There are no rooms to keep alive, no phones to keep in sync, no shared state — there is one phone, and everything that happens, happens inside it.

Better still: from the second opening onwards the game starts even with no connection, because it installs itself in the browser as a small app. On Android and iPhone you can add it to the home screen and it behaves like any other application, without going near a store. We go into the difference between the two ways of being online in the guide on games with nothing to download.

Where a game like this comes from

Hot potato is a traditional game, one of the ones with no author: you pass an object while something counts the time, and whoever holds it when the time runs out pays. It exists in dozens of variants, in every language, from long before phones existed. Waterbomb is our version of that idea: the code, the interface, the wording of the prompts, the system of duration ranges and the water animation are written by us.

We do not reproduce rules, artwork, names or trademarks from any commercial product, and we are not connected to any boxed game. If a prompt reads badly or unclearly, tell me: prompts can be fixed.

Frequently asked questions about Waterbomb

How many phones do you need?

One. That isn't a simplification, it's the game. There is no board to open elsewhere, no room code, nothing to synchronise. You open the game on a phone and that phone goes round the circle.

How long does a round really last?

It depends on the range you chose and on that round's draw. Long runs 25 to 75 seconds, right 15 to 55, short 8 to 35, roulette 5 to 90. Within the range every round is its own thing — and the number never shows while you play. You find out after the burst.

Can you play it with children?

Yes, from about six or seven, with only the everyday group on and the spicy questions off. With younger players the long range helps too: they need a few extra seconds to find a word, and a balloon that bursts too early frustrates them instead of making them laugh.

Does it work without internet?

After the first opening, yes. The game stays in the browser and starts up offline: handy in a garden, on a beach or up a mountain, where signal is optional. You only need a connection the first time, and when a new version comes out.

Does the phone actually get wet?

No. The water is all on the screen: the balloon bursts, the screen floods, drops run down it and the wet-glass effect stays until you tap to carry on. The phone stays dry. Your dignity does not.

Can you play it over a video call?

It's the wrong game for that. Waterbomb depends on physically handing an object over, which doesn't exist at a distance. If you are in different places, look at Team Quiz or Cronos, which are built for it — the setup is in the guide on playing remotely.

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