Party & Social
Police Sketch
Adult Drinking Game
Draw the suspect from a ridiculous witness description.
- Category
- Party & Social
- Players
- 3–10 players
- Duration
- ~5 minutes (estimate)
- Best group size
- We recommend 4 to 8 players, enough for a real lineup without making the vote crowded. The game supports 3 to 10.
How to play
Police Sketch needs at least three players and lasts three rounds. It carries the Adult Drinking Game badge on the shelf, so treat it as a game for grown-up rooms.
Every round, the big screen reads out a strange witness description, the kind of thing a very confused eyewitness might say, such as a suspect in a cracked porcelain mask carrying a lantern that casts no light. Nobody has a head start: all players hear the same description at the same time.
Everyone then has 45 seconds to draw the suspect on their phone. You are not trying to make art. You are trying to capture the one or two details the room will latch onto, because those are what people look for in the lineup.
When time runs out, the sketches appear on the TV as a numbered lineup and players get 20 seconds to vote for the best match. You cannot vote for your own drawing. Each vote your sketch receives earns 100 points, and the highest total after three rounds wins.
The joy is in the lineup reveal. Seeing six wildly different interpretations of the same sentence side by side is reliably the loudest moment of the game, and arguing about which one truly looks like the suspect is half the fun.
Tips for hosts
- Read the description out loud along with the TV so everyone catches every odd detail.
- Encourage players to draw the strangest detail first. Votes tend to follow the one feature everyone remembers.
- Pause on the lineup for a few seconds before voting starts and let people point and laugh.
- Play it after a word game: it resets the energy without needing anyone to be quick with spelling.
Best for
Best for: Groups who like drawing badly on purpose and judging each other kindly.
Play Police Sketch
Open Sofa Showdown on a laptop or computer connected to your TV, choose Police Sketch from the game shelf, and share the four-letter room code with your friends.
Play now Opens hosting on this screen. Nothing starts until you choose a game.