Why You Should Create Your Own Guess Who Game and How To Do It

Brooke Amidei
2 days ago
7 min read

I had seen a couple of hilarious Instagram reels of people who had made their own Guess Who game and literally couldn't stop watching them because they were so funny and entertaining and I knew immediately I wanted to recreate this with my own family.

To back up, Guess Who is the game for little kids where you have two boards that have the same 24 pictures of different people mixed up in a different way on each board. You each randomly select a character card and put it in the front spot and that becomes the person that other player tries to guess. To do so, you ask questions like "does your person have a hat on?" or "is your person wearing glasses". Depending on their answer, you put down the characters not matching the description until you can narrow it down and make a guess on who their person is. Okay- are we all on board here?

Because imagine that but with YOUR family or friends as the characters on the board!

I recently made personalized Guess Who games for two separate family events this summer. A reunion on my in-laws side and a family get together for my side of the family. Playing this game with our families this summer, was truly the most fun I had all summer. I'm not joking. These events were already really fun, but this was the highlight of both gatherings and it was so unexpected, so inexpensive and now we get to play this again every time we're together.

Create Your Own Personalized Guess Who Game

I'm going to walk you through the simple steps to creating your own personalized

Guess Who game.

1- Purchase Guess Who Game

First purchase your OG Guess Who game. This is the exact one I purchased on Amazon.

2- Get Canva Template

Next, I went to Etsy and purchased a Canva template to help me personalize my game. Unfortunately the exact one I purchased is not there, but I did some homework (not all of the templates are the exact size they need to be) and found this one that I think will work perfectly with the exact version of the Guess Who game I have linked above. Getting the correct size template was the toughest part of creating my games, so hopefully this has spared you from having the same issue. Also, the template will save you a TON of time and it is under $3. Money well spent.

3- Get Canva (if you don't already have it)

If you haven't used Canva before, it is a super awesome, easy-to-use (even for me) online graphic design platform for creating everything from social media images to presentations. It is free, with options to upgrade, but you should be able to log-in and upload this template just fine without any cost to you, and I'm sure you'll find some other uses for it as well.

4- Choose Your Characters

Okay, you've got all of your supplies- the game and the template, now you need to choose your 24 characters. This can be tough, but don't let it deter you. It usually doesn't magically work out where you have exactly 24 family members you want to include. When it doesn't, just decide where you are going to cut it off. Maybe take out the spouses or grandkids and fill in the remaining slots with close family friends everyone knows or, as I did with my in-laws version, I had to "ro sham bo" for the final two slots among the most recent three to marry into the family and make an apology that the numbers weren't exactly perfect. You can also make additional cards and swap them out from time to time. Conversely, if you don't have enough in your family to make up the 24 slots consider adding in some close family friends or neighbors. Also- they do not have to be living. We included some family members that have passed away and it worked out perfectly and in fact was nice to include them. All in all, just because you have to work a little bit to find the right grouping of 24 characters doesn't mean you should throw in the towel- believe me, it is SO worth it.

5- Gather Your Photos

Once you have your list, locate a photo of each person and put it in a folder on your computer. You will want a photo where you can at least crop it to be just their face and shoulders. You can decide if you want some where people are wearing hats, glasses, scarves, etc. I found that there was a good variety without really trying. You may also find that one big, group, family photo could take care of a lot of family members. For example one family had recently had family photos done so I was able to knock out an aunt, uncle, four cousins and their spouses with just one photo because it was such a great, clear photo of all of them.

6- Create Your Game

Now that you have all of your characters and photos you can start to plug them into your template on Canva. This should be pretty straight forward if you follow the instructions on your Etsy template. Pro Tip- you can remove the background an an image in Canva by clicking on the image and then clicking on "BG Remover" if you have the pro version. If not you can click on "Edit" and remove it on your own. That helps the game look more clean and keeps the focus on the person not the location where they are, background, etc. but if that seems to tedious, I wouldn't sweat it.

Once you have completely filled out your template (both red and blue character cards and one set of yellow cards) you will want to print them. I sent mine via email to a local print shop (I used UPS) and had them print them in color and on a heavy card stock (that is important so they last). While I was there I was able to use their machine to cut them quickly and cleanly. Then just bring them home and place the character cards randomly into the slots and make sure you do the second board differently.

Now for the fun...You're ready to play!

First you get to surprise your family with your personalized game. Some people will know exactly what it is (and already be laughing), and others will need a little explaining. You don't need a giant group or family reunion where all of the characters are present (although that is really fun), all you need is one other person who knows all, or most, of the characters to play.

You can absolutely play it the way the original game is intended, where you ask questions based only on appearance. Ex. "Does your person have brown hair?" or "Is your person wearing a blue shirt?" That is a great way to play it with younger players, like the photo above, who may not yet know everyone, BUT the fun of playing a personalized Guess Who game comes in asking more personalized questions.

Coming up with your own questions is literally the most creative and hilarious part of the game, but below are some of my favorites I remember from our summer events to give you some inspiration. Reminder that you don't have to know the answer absolutely, it is a guessing game after all. In fact, we had MANY times where we didn't guess the character correctly and it was fun to go back and see what question we guessed the answer to differently.

Personalized Guess Who Inspiration Questions:

Does your person consider themselves an athlete?
Would your person have a complicated coffee order?
Would your person go to a yoga class?
Is/was your person a good student?
Would you want this person to babysit for you?
Do you think your person would be a safe driver?
Would your person wear thong underwear?
Would your person shot gun a beer?
Is your person an artist?
Would you cast this person in a play?
Does this person still have all of their own teeth?
Do you think your person has been in a fist fight?
Is your person good with technology?
Would your person wear a Hawaiian shirt?
Would I beat this person in an arm wrestling match?
Would you want to eat something this person has cooked?
Is your person likely to enjoy gardening?
Has your person purchased a bra in the past decade?
Would this person be likely to send back food?
Would this person's favorite color be beige?

Now as you are reading through this imagine a board with photos of your grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings. It can get absolutely hilarious! My niece and I played it a million times and drew a crowd at the family reunion with everyone laughing at our questions and dying to see which characters we eliminated after each question, and my sister and I played quietly by ourselves giggling at the questions and answers we each came up with, maybe bordering on inappropriate. I'm telling you- it can be an absolute blast!

I hope you and your family or friend group (man this would be fun to do with a group of friends) has as much fun with your Guess Who game as we have. I promise it isn't as time consuming or difficult as it might sound to create and it is 100% worth a little prep on your part.

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