Over to You
Only you see the word. Everyone else guesses.
What it is
Over to You is a drawing game for a room with one tablet. Whoever holds it presses and holds the eye to see a secret word, lets go, and has a minute to draw it while everyone else shouts guesses. When someone says it, the person drawing taps the check mark, the word is shown to the room, and the tablet passes to the next colour.
Up to six people join by colour, each colour with a shape of its own, and the tablet goes round in the order they joined. Anyone in the room can guess. A round is at least four turns, in whole laps of the drawers, and at the end the room sees how many words it got together. Nobody beats anybody. There is no computer judging the drawings and nothing to type: just people, a pen and a clock.
Only the person drawing sees the word
The word shows only while the person drawing holds the eye down, on the hand-over screen or during the turn. The clock and the score never show it. When the turn ends, got or not, the word is shown to the room with the drawing. The words are things, actions and ideas, each one chosen to be fine for a classroom.
One tap on the check mark stops the clock and says Got it! for three seconds before the word appears, with Not yet to go back to the drawing and the time that was left. If sound is on, a soft tick marks each of the last ten seconds.
The pen
A drag draws a line and a tap makes a dot, for eyes and buttons. A resting palm draws nothing. Undo takes back the last line or dot, or a whole clear. Clearing the page and skipping each take a second tap within three seconds, so neither happens by accident. For an impossible word there is one skip a turn: it deals a new word, never a harder one, on a fresh page. The clock keeps running; hold the eye to see the new word.
Before a round, pick a level. Easy deals everyday things. Medium mixes in bigger things and actions. Hard keeps the bigger things and actions, leaves out the everyday things, and brings in ideas and things that are hard to tell apart. A turn lasts a minute, or a minute and a half if the room chooses.
How to play
- JoinTap your colour, then Start
- See the wordHold the eye
- Start the clockLet go of the eye
- DrawDrag for a line, tap for a dot
- Someone said itThe check mark
- StuckSkip, twice
Tap anywhere to begin, tap your colours to join (or just tap Start), and pick Easy, Medium or Hard and 1 min or 1½ min; it starts on Medium and 1 min. The screen says whose turn it is: Pass to Green. Green holds the eye to see the word, then lets go, and the clock starts. Pick a pen colour or the eraser; undo takes back the last mark. Tapped the check mark by mistake? Tap Not yet. At the end, Play again keeps the same players, and Change players goes back to the colours. On the colour screen and between turns, the speaker at the top right turns sound on; it starts off.
On a desktop, the mouse draws and clicks the buttons, just as by touch. Or use the keys: on the colour screen, the number keys add or remove a colour and Enter starts; the level and the clock are picked with the mouse. Hold Space to see the word, and let go to start the clock. In a turn, the number keys pick a pen colour and E the eraser; Z undoes; Backspace twice clears and S twice skips; Enter marks it got, and Escape or Z takes it back. Enter then goes on to the next turn or the score, and from the score plays again.
What isn’t settled yet
It needs a tablet in someone’s hands. The person drawing holds the screen so only they see the word; on a screen fixed to a wall, the whole room would see it.
Nothing stops someone writing the word instead of drawing it; as at a table, the room calls it. The words are in English only. There are no points for each player: the room scores together. And the levels are a judgement: Hard brings in ideas, like gravity or an echo, which can stump a whole room.
Build Log
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Build 1
The secret word was drawn on the screen only while the person drawing held the eye button, on the hand-over screen or mid-turn, and the game handed it out nowhere else: not on the clock or the score. Once a turn ended it was gone from play, kept only to show the room. Worth writing down: on one shared tablet, the only safe secret is one the screen never shows unasked.
Credits and licences
No third-party engine — it draws to a plain canvas. The typefaces it does use are embedded under the SIL Open Font Licence, with the copyright notice retained in the shipped file. Cover drawn from the game’s own pen and screen code.
Over to You is original work by Launchway Games.