Telestrations

Telestrations is a party and guessing game published by The Op, also known as USAopoly, first released in 2009 for four to eight players in sessions lasting about thirty minutes and recommended for players aged twelve and up. Each participant works from their own personal sketchbook, and on each round players are prompted to sketch a word or phrase drawn from a card, then pass their sketchbook to the next player, who must guess in writing what the drawing shows before sketching that guess themselves on the following page for the next player to interpret in turn. This chain of alternating drawing and guessing continues around the table across a full round, so that by the time each book returns to its original owner it has passed through a whole sequence of increasingly distorted interpretations, in the same spirit as the children's game of telephone. Points are awarded across three rounds for favorite sketches, favorite guesses and for players who manage to guess the original word correctly, with the game leaning on its comic misreadings and drawings, rather than artistic skill, as its main source of enjoyment.