Arms reach

Arms reach is a game designed specifically for playing with an group online.

Setup

Start by giving players a few minutes to go round their house collecting many things and placing them within arms reach. Keeping all the object within arms reach is very important, because when you are playing the game each player’s head must be observable on their webcam at all times.

Game play

Choose a judge for the round and provide a prompt from the questions below. Players must select something within arm’s reach that most closely matches the prompt question. The players must then convince the judge that their item is the best.

Example prompt questions: costs a lot of money, contains exactly 400 things, is lighter than a feather.

Rules

1. After each prompt, the players heads should be visible at all times on the webcam.
2. If the background shows they are moving from room to room they should be disqualified from that round (although a trust system should be adopted where there are privacy concerns or technical problems that make the webcam inappropriate).
3. Items cannot be reconfigurable: You can’t use Lego models, drawings, pictures on phones or etch-a-sketch doodles to represent an item.
4. Use each item only once. For example if you use a rare book as an example of something that costs a lot of money then you cannot also use it as your thing that contains 400 things even if it is exactly 400 pages long.
5. Players get don’t get to know what questions are coming (so you don’t know you will be asked for 400 things when you said your rare book was expensive). If the group is small then players who have seen the questions can play if they receive a penalty, such as not being permitted to fetch items at the beginning of the game.
6. Judges decision is final and, when resolving disputes, this rule supercedes the others.
7. New round… new judge.

Questions

Something that:

1. Can propel a golf ball
2. Makes you feel grown up
3. Scares cats, elephants or squirrels
4. Bounces really high
5. Burns human flesh
6. Resists fire, flood and impact damage
7. Can pass through the eye of a needle
8. A horse would like to eat
9. Is dangerous
10. Looks like a strawberry
11. Is heavy
12. You can serve it at a banquet
13. Enhances a cake
14. Is healthy
15. Can be useful when camping
16. Wouldn’t harm a fly
17. Makes you happy
18. Contains information

Take it further

Think of your own prompt questions to extend the game.

For more silly online fun, try playing drawing twins.