The blocks start falling, and nobody is in control on their own.

Familiar, comforting, instantly tense. The difference is that the controls are split across the team. One player rotates, one moves sideways, one triggers the specials, and nobody can place a piece by themselves. Coordination beats reflexes, and a team that goes quiet watches its stack climb.

Your team against the other teams

Six players to a team, and you add as many teams as the room needs. Put IT on one and marketing on another, then let them see whose stack is winning.

That makes it cooperative and competitive at the same time. You are working with the five people next to you and racing everyone else in the room.

Who it's for

HR and People and Culture teams running a team day. Managers who want their departments in the same room doing something other than talking.

It suits a mid-sized group and up, and it suits an evening or the back half of a team day. It is not the one to open a formal programme with.

How it plays

Players join by link on their phones, no app. Each team splits the controls between them, the blocks start falling, and twists land mid-round that force a team to change what it was doing.

Setting it up takes two or three minutes. You pick the teams and start it, and there is nothing to prepare beforehand.

What you can change

Team size, the speed and the difficulty, and how often the twists arrive. You can run it gently or make it genuinely hard.

What it does to a room

It gets loud, because it has to. Nobody clears a line quietly, and a team that stops talking watches its stack climb.

Everyone has a job and nobody is knocked out. There is no reading during play, so nothing stops to explain itself.

Team Blocks is part of the Games for Crowds library, free and in testing. It works best with everyone in the same room.