3 game ideas for developers (or nerds) for your evenings/team-building events

Whether it's for a team building activity or simply to play with friends during lunch break, I love proposing games that blend culture, reflection, and logic.

The advantage of these 3 games is that the rounds are very quick (most of the time less than 10 minutes) and that they are also accessible to non-developers, except for the last one.

Obviously after this article, you'll have the right to call me a nerd as much as you want, but I think that wasn't up for debate anymore anyway!

#1 - Wikirace

I'll start right away with my favorite, the one that requires the least preparation—all you need is a phone per person (or a computer), an internet connection, and in 15 seconds you can start playing.

The goal: Choose two existing Wikipedia pages, one for the start and one for the finish, and be the first to get from one to the other by clicking only on internal links within Wikipedia!

Example: Try to go from the page for "Birman" to the page for "Tiananmen Square" as quickly as possible, the first to get there wins the round.

And even though it sounds complicated like this, I can assure you that most games are won in 3 to 4 minutes with an average of 7 pages visited between start and finish.

#2 - Geoguessr

For this one, I must admit that I even happen to play solo games sometimes...

The concept of the game is very simple: you land randomly on a spot on the globe thanks to Google Maps' Street View mode, and by moving from street to street, you have to figure out your starting location on the map.

By creating challenges, you can play on the same starting point with friends and see which one of you manages to be the most accurate, knowing that the app measures down to the meter!

To play: https://www.geoguessr.com

Weak point: The only downside of the game is that it is now limited to one game per day in free mode, but the pro version is between 2 and 3$ per month, which remains affordable if you get hooked on the game.

#3 - Clash of code

There's a good chance you already know the fun programming training platform: CodinGame

What I'm going to talk to you about today is a special challenge mode on the platform called "Clash of code" and available at this link.

This challenge works like all the others on Codingame: You read a statement, you get a dataset, and you have to solve the statement by passing all the tests with your code and the provided data.

Except here you're playing against other developers, but also against the platform which will choose among three random constraints:

• The fastest player wins
• The shortest code (in number of characters) wins
• Reverse mode (you have to guess the statement)

The games last between 30 seconds and 5 minutes for the longest ones, which allows the pressure to build up very quickly and fuels each player's competitive spirit!

If you have other game ideas, feel free to share them with me in the comments on the blog or on social media, and if you're reading this article the day it's published, have a great weekend!