Homemade Charades — Support

Homemade Charades is played by two teams, and each team needs at least two players — so four people in total. There's no upper limit. If you'd rather not pick teams yourselves, tap "Shuffle teams" on the setup screen and the app will split everyone at random.

You build one deck of cards and then play that same deck three times over, and each round makes the clues harder. Round 1 is Describe: say anything you like except the name itself, part of it, or a rhyme. Round 2 is One Word: a single word is your only clue per card. Round 3 is Mime: no words at all. Because you've already seen every card, the later rounds move much faster.

That's up to you. On the setup screen you choose how many cards are in the deck (from 11 to 35) and how many seconds each turn lasts (from 20 to 120). A small deck with short turns plays in a few minutes; a full deck with long turns makes a proper evening of it.

So a game can never end in a draw. The stepper moves in twos and keeps the total odd, which means one team always finishes ahead.

Yes — turn on Kids mode. It swaps the word cards for picture cards and cuts the game down to a single, simple round: talk, make noises and act it out, just don't say the word. You can choose which picture categories to include: Actions, Animals, Emotions, Fantasy, Foods, Objects, Places and Sports. A tip from us: if a child names the picture differently from the word underneath it, count it anyway — and let the little ones win as often as you can.

Famous people, films and songs. You choose which of those three to include and can set roughly how much of the deck each one takes up under "Deck mix" in Advanced settings. You can also pick the region — International, French, or both — and when you play in French, international film titles are shown by their French names.

Yes. Turn on "Write your own cards" in Advanced settings and, before the game starts, you'll pass the phone around and everyone adds their own. Each card is hidden the instant it's added, so nobody can see or change what anyone else wrote. You'll need at least four cards to start. Turning the option back off deletes the cards you've written, and the app will ask you to confirm first.

It evens out lucky draws. One team can happen to get the easier cards in round 1, so with Fair mode switched on, round 2 first shows each team the cards the other team found in round 1 — both sides face the same cards once before going back to their own. Round 3 then plays normally.

Either, and you choose in Advanced settings. "By points" gives the win to whoever guessed the most cards across all three rounds. "By rounds" gives it to whoever won the most individual rounds, so 2–1 or 3–0. There's also Pro Mode, which shows the winning screen the moment one team can no longer be caught, with the option to play out the remaining cards just for fun.

You keep what's left. Clear the whole deck before time runs out and your leftover seconds carry over to the start of your next round, so a fast round pays off twice.

Tap "Mistake — end turn". The turn stops there, but the cards found before the slip still count. When the timer stops, the whole table reviews that turn's guesses together and anyone can send a wrong answer back to the bottom of the deck. Note there's no skipping or passing in Homemade Charades — every card has to be guessed.

Nothing is lost. If a game is cut short — the phone dies, or you simply have to stop — the app saves your progress at the last change of turn and offers to resume it the next time you open the app.