Guest Game
Guest Game is a short-form guessing game in which one player hosts a party while other performers arrive as characters with secret identities or traits assigned by the audience. The host must determine each guest's secret through interaction. The game rewards clear character physicalization and the host's observational acuity.
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Related Games
Party Quirks
Party Quirks is a short-form guessing game in which one performer plays a host welcoming guests to a party, each of whom has been secretly assigned a strange identity or behavioral quirk. The host must figure out each guest's quirk through interaction while the guests drop increasingly obvious clues. The game was popularized by Whose Line Is It Anyway and remains a staple of short-form shows.
Dating Game
Dating Game is a short-form guessing game modeled on television dating shows. One player interviews three potential "dates," each secretly endowed with a character quirk, celebrity identity, or unusual trait by the audience. The dater must identify each contestant's secret through the interview. The game rewards clear physicalization and clever deduction.
The Party
The Party is an improvisational game in which players take on character identities and interact at a simulated social gathering. In the most widely documented variant, each player is assigned a character they do not know (the identity is written on a card or otherwise concealed) and fellow guests drop subtle conversational hints to help the player deduce who they are. The game develops listening, subtext, and character awareness simultaneously.
Ted Talks
Ted Talks is a short-form game in which a performer delivers an improvised presentation in the style of a TED Talk on an audience-suggested topic. Other players may provide slides, demonstrations, or audience participation. The game rewards confident public speaking, the ability to sound authoritative on any subject, and the comedic gap between expertise and ignorance.
Bartender
Bartender is a short-form guessing game in which one player tends bar while several patrons, each endowed with a secret character trait, identity, or quirk by the audience, attempt to communicate their assignments through behavior, dialogue, and physical choices. The bartender must identify each patron's secret while maintaining the scene and keeping the bar running. The game belongs to the family of guessing games (alongside Party Quirks and Psychiatrist) and creates comedy through the tension between the patrons' increasingly obvious clues and the bartender's attempts to decode them. The bar setting provides a natural framework for one-on-one interactions, character reveals, and the rotating focus that guessing games require.
Who Am I?
Who Am I is a guessing game and character exercise in which one participant is assigned or endowed with an identity, fictional character, or real person visible to everyone else, and must determine that identity through yes/no questions or through reading other performers' reactions, training endowment, characterization, and observational reasoning.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Guest Game. Retrieved September 28, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/games/guest-game
The Improv Archive. "Guest Game." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/games/guest-game.
The Improv Archive. "Guest Game." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/games/guest-game. Accessed September 28, 2026.
The Improv Archive is a systemically maintained repository. The archive itself acts as the corporate author.