Board Games Like Pictionary

The best board game like Pictionary for most groups is Telestrations: everyone draws at the same time, nobody sits out, and a bad drawing is funnier than a good one. If your table splits into people who like drawing and people who dread it, A Fake Artist Goes to New York is the one where the non-artist can win. If you want Pictionary’s exact rules with an adults-only deck, Drawing Without Dignity is the honest answer, and if nobody wants to draw at all, Articulate is the talking half of Pictionary sold on its own.

Pictionary has been around since 1985 and almost everyone has played it, which is exactly why a group reaches for something else: one person draws while the rest wait, the artist in the room wins every round, and the word cards run thin after a few holidays. So the list below is ranked by one question: how much drawing does each game actually ask of you, and from whom? It runs from the game where everyone draws every round to the one where nobody draws at all.

The 5 Best Games Like Pictionary

Telestrations

Publisher: The Op · 4–8 players · ages 10 and up · 30 minutes (The Op’s page for the 2nd Edition)

Telestrations is Pictionary crossed with the telephone game, and the drawing is the whole point. Everyone gets a dry-erase sketchbook, draws the word on their card in sixty seconds, then passes the book; the next player guesses what the sketch was and passes the guess on to be drawn again. When the books come back around, each one is read out page by page, and the gap between the first word and the last guess is where the laughter lives. Because all eight people are sketching at once, there is none of Pictionary’s waiting, and because the guesses are supposed to go wrong, the person who cannot draw is as valuable as the one who can.

An honest note from the house collection: Michael has played Telestrations on friends’ copies and never bought his own, because his group gets the same game from a pad of paper, a pen each and a list of words. That is a fair test of the box. It earns its price if you want 130 prompt cards, pads that survive dozens of plays and the timer in one place, and the 2nd Edition The Op released this year is the version to buy (the original 8-player listing has no buy button any more, so the button below goes to the new one). If a stack of paper would do, start there and buy the box when the paper runs out. We cover three games that build on this idea in our games like Telestrations list.

A Fake Artist Goes to New York

Publisher: Oink Games · 5–10 players · ages 8 and up · 20 minutes (Oink Games’ page)

This is the drawing game for the person who cannot draw. One player picks a word and tells everyone except one secret fake artist; then, going around the table, each player adds a single line to a shared picture, twice. The real artists want to prove they know the word without making it obvious; the fake artist is bluffing with every stroke and trying to work out the word from what the others draw. At the end everyone votes, and Oink’s rule that makes it sing: even if the fake artist is caught, they still win by naming the word.

It keeps less of Pictionary than Telestrations does, and that is the appeal. Nobody draws a whole thing, so artistic skill stops mattering and reading the table starts; a six-year-old’s wobbly line is just as useful as an adult’s. The box is tiny and the whole game is a pad, a few markers and a stack of cards, so it is the one on this list that travels. Skip it below five players, where the bluff has nowhere to hide. Oink pitches it at eight and up and twenty minutes, and both are right.

Cranium (25th Anniversary Edition)

Current edition: Funko Games · “4 or more players, ages 12 and up” is what the listing title states; the publisher’s own product page could not be reached when we checked, so we are not restating a playing time

Cranium keeps about a quarter of Pictionary. Teams move around a board and each space calls for a different kind of challenge: draw something (sometimes with your eyes closed), sculpt it from clay, hum or act it out, answer trivia, or spell a word backwards. The drawing and sculpting cards are the Pictionary half; the trivia and word cards are for the people who would never pick up a pencil. The team that collects one of each card type and completes a final challenge wins.

Buy it for a mixed room where one person is an artist, one is a trivia machine and one would rather perform. Because no single skill carries a team, Cranium is the game on this list that lets a family play without the same person winning every time. Skip it if what you like about Pictionary is the speed: with four challenge types and a board to walk, a full game runs long, and the clay has a way of ending up in the carpet. The edition now sold is Funko Games’ 25th Anniversary version, which is what the button below links to.

Drawing Without Dignity

Publisher: TwoPointOh Games · ages 17 and up (publisher’s page) · 4–12+ players (listing title)

Drawing Without Dignity is Pictionary with its rules left alone and its word list replaced. Teams, a timer, a die to pick which clue on the card you draw, sixty seconds for your team to guess, keep the card if they get it: that is Pictionary. The clues are the difference, and they are the kind you would not draw in front of your parents. The publisher rates it 17 and up and means it.

This is the right answer if the question behind “games like Pictionary” is really “Pictionary, but for a party after the kids are in bed.” It keeps all of the drawing and all of the waiting of the original, so it is not the pick for a group that found Pictionary slow; it is the pick for a group that found Pictionary tame. Shelve it well away from the family-night games.

Articulate

Publisher: Drumond Park · 4–20+ players · ages 12 and up (Drumond Park’s page)

Articulate keeps none of the drawing, which is why it belongs at the end of a list ranked by drawing. It is Pictionary’s guessing half played with words: your team flips the timer and you describe as many cards as you can without saying the word on them, one card after another, and your marker moves a space for each one guessed. The board spaces set the category (a person, a place, an action, nature), and the game is a sprint of fast talking rather than a sixty-second standoff with a pencil.

It is the game for the table where someone says “I love Pictionary but I cannot draw.” It is also a British game, so the copy on Amazon ships from the UK and costs more than the others here; the cards are written for a British audience and a few references will land oddly in Salt Lake City. If that bothers you, our games like Taboo list has the American equivalents, and our games like Charades list covers the acting end of the same idea.

If what you like about Pictionary is the guessing, not the drawing

Half the people who search for games like Pictionary are looking for a drawing game. The other half liked the shouting, the teams and the timer, and would be happier with no pencil at all. For that second group, the party games that get the most table time in Michael’s house are not drawing games: Wavelength, which he calls one of his all-time favorite party games because it starts conversations that outlast the evening; So Clover!, his pick for the best quiet party game and the best one for an odd number of players, because everyone writes clues at the same time and nobody waits; and Monikers, a structured three-round charades that he rates above any home-made version. All three are in our games like Taboo list or our games like Charades list. For a couch full of non-gamers, Just One does the job; in his words it does not have to be a good game, but it does have to solve a problem, and the problem it solves is getting people who never play games to play one.

Two more directions. If you want to draw but want it quick and cheap, our whiteboard games list needs nothing but a marker. And if the Pictionary you remember is the one with kids and grandparents at the table, the drawing game that lives on the grandparents’ shelf in Michael’s house is Picture Charades, a sentimental keep rather than a recommendation, and the shelf itself is explained in our guide to sorting a kids’ game shelf. For the rest of the party cupboard, start with our best party games list, games like Apples to Apples and games like 20 Questions.

Building a party shelf? Grab our free Top 10 Must-Have Games guide — ten games we think earn a permanent place on any shelf, including two that get a room talking the way a good drawing game does.

Also read: the best classic board games the whole crew will love.

What dropped off this list

Six Second Scribbles, a ten-drawings-in-a-minute speed game, was on this list when we first wrote it. Checked November 2026: the Amazon listing we linked has been removed, and the publisher’s own site shows only a “coming soon” page, so we cannot verify who makes it now or what it costs. It stays here as a note rather than a recommendation; if it comes back into print we will restore it. Telestrations covers the same fast-sketch itch with a box you can actually buy.

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