Virtual Baby Shower Games

I have hosted two of these now, and the thing nobody warns you about is the silence.

Not the awkward-pause kind. The specific, excruciating kind that happens when eleven people are staring at a grid of their own faces, the host says “so, um, shall we do a game?”, and somebody’s audio is cutting out. Ninety seconds of that and you can watch the guest list start to thin.

The games are not the problem. The problem is that a virtual baby shower has no room to breathe. In a house, a lull is fine, because people drift to the food and talk to each other. On a call, a lull is dead air, and dead air is when people remember they have something else to do.

Search for baby shower virtual games and you will be handed fifteen of them, most of which have never been tested on an actual call. So this page is different. These are the baby shower games virtual hosts actually reach for, sorted honestly by how they behave on a screen, plus a run sheet builder that fits them to the length of your call and then runs the shower live with a timer.

The best virtual baby shower games

Not every game survives the trip to a screen. Some are genuinely better on a call. A couple quietly die.

I have been honest about which is which, because the thing that ruins a virtual shower is not a bad game, it is a game that goes silent for six minutes while everybody solves a puzzle alone. All of these are fun virtual baby shower games in a room. Only some of them survive the webcam.

If you want virtual baby shower games with answers already built in, every one of these has the answer key on screen, so you are not scoring anything by hand while eleven people wait.

Games that are better on a call

These are the online baby shower games I would build the whole thing around.

Don’t Say Baby is better remote than in person, and it is not close. Everyone can hear everyone, so there is nowhere to mutter the word quietly to the person beside you. The catches are cleaner and the accusations are louder. Announce it in the first minute and it runs underneath the entire call, which is exactly what a virtual shower needs: something happening at all times, without needing a slot on the schedule.

Who Knows Mommy Best needs nothing but voices and a scoreboard, so it loses absolutely nothing over video. She fills in her real answers beforehand, you share your screen, guests write their guesses, and you reveal. The reveal is the moment, and it plays just as well through a webcam as across a room.

Mommy or Daddy is the easiest game to run remotely, full stop. Guests shout a side. That is the whole interaction. There is nothing to hand out, nothing to write on, and nothing to collect.

The emoji game was practically designed for a screen, and the virtual baby shower emoji game is the one I would open with. Share it, let people race to answer in the chat, and give the point to the first correct answer. It is the fastest game to explain on a call, which matters more than you think when you are explaining something to eleven confused squares.

Games that work exactly as well

Baby shower trivia transfers cleanly. Share your screen, read the questions out, and let people keep their own score honestly. They mostly will.

The Price Is Right is arguably easier online, because the prices are on a screen everybody can see at once rather than being passed around. Have guests type their guesses into the chat so nobody copies.

Baby shower bingo earns its place for one specific reason: it plays quietly underneath the gift opening, and the gift opening is the flattest part of any virtual shower. Send everyone a card before the call and let it run while she unwraps.

Games that go quiet

Word scramble and word search are both excellent in a room and both a liability on a call. The problem is not the game, it is what the game asks people to do: go head-down and solve something alone. In a house that is a pleasant hum. On a call it is eleven people staring at their laps in total silence, and it feels twice as long as it is.

Use them, but use them properly. Send them out before the call and collect answers in the chat, or run one as a warm-up while people are still joining and the host is saying “can you hear me?” for the fourth time. Do not put one in the middle of your shower and expect it to hold the room.

Fitting it all into the call

Here is the thing that actually decides whether a virtual baby shower works, and it is not the games.

Choosing games for a virtual baby shower is the easy part. The hard part is that you have sixty minutes, a guest list scattered across time zones, and no idea how long anything takes. So you either wing it and the shower dies in the gaps, or you overplan and the call is still going at ninety minutes with four people left, one of whom is the mum-to-be, who cannot leave.

The run sheet builder on this page does the arithmetic. Tell it how long the call is, tick what you want to play, and it tells you whether it fits. Pick too much and it says so, and it tells you exactly how many minutes to cut. Then it lays the whole thing out against the clock, so you know that the gifts start at 2:28 and the last game ends at 2:52.

And then it will run the shower for you. Live mode gives you a big timer for whatever is happening now, tells you what is next, and shows you when you are running over, which you will be, because the gift opening always overruns.

Print it out if you would rather have paper next to the laptop. I usually do.

How long should a virtual baby shower be?

Sixty minutes. Ninety is too long and forty-five feels rushed.

That length is what should drive your choice of games for virtual baby shower calls, rather than the other way round. Pick the virtual games for baby shower calls that fit the hour you have, not the hour you wish you had.

Nobody has ever left a video call thinking “I wish that had gone on longer”, and everybody has left one thinking the opposite. End it while people are still enjoying it. That is the entire secret.

How many games can you actually fit?

Three, if you are also opening gifts. Four if you are not.

That surprises people, because most virtual baby shower games ideas lists will hand you fifteen of them, and every roundup of virtual baby shower game ideas assumes you have all afternoon. But a game takes eight to fifteen minutes once you have explained it, dealt with the person whose microphone is muted, and read out the scores. Three games, a welcome, the gifts, and a goodbye is a full hour, and it is a good hour.

Virtual baby shower games for work

If this is a shower for a colleague, everything above still applies but the room is different, and pretending otherwise is how these go wrong.

Your guests are not her closest friends. They are people who know her from meetings. So the questions that work at a friends-and-family shower, about her childhood nickname and what she wanted to be when she grew up, will land on total silence, and a colleague will feel worse than if you had played nothing at all.

Some rules I have learned the hard way about virtual baby shower games for coworkers.

Keep it to thirty minutes. It is a work call. Everybody has another one at the top of the hour and they will leave whether you have finished or not.

Pick baby shower games for virtual shower calls that do not require anyone to know her personally. Don’t Say Baby is perfect, because it needs no knowledge of her at all and it gives quiet colleagues an easy way to participate. The Price Is Right works for the same reason. The emoji game works because it is a puzzle, not a test of intimacy.

Avoid anything that ranks how well people know her. If you must play one, use the version that asks about the pregnancy rather than her childhood, so that a colleague who joined last year is not publicly demonstrating that they know nothing about her.

And skip the gift opening. On a work call it takes forever and it makes everyone acutely aware of what they did or did not spend.

Two games, thirty minutes, no gifts. Free virtual baby shower games for co-workers do not need to be elaborate. They need to be short and painless, and to give people a reason to turn their camera on.

Zoom baby shower games, and the practical bit

Whatever you are calling on, the mechanics are the same, and the baby shower games you can play virtually are the same games either way. These are the things that go wrong.

Share your screen before you need to, not when you need to. Every zoom baby shower has a moment where the host is fumbling with a share button while eleven people watch. Open the game in a tab beforehand.

Use the chat deliberately. It is the single biggest advantage a virtual shower has over a real one. Guests can answer simultaneously without shouting over each other, you get a timestamped record of who answered first, and the quiet guests participate far more than they would in a room. Any game where guests submit an answer should use the chat.

Ask people to unmute for the games. A muted room is a dead room. If a guest is somewhere noisy, that is fine, but the default should be on.

Have one person who is not the host running the scores. The host cannot read questions, watch the chat, keep score and manage the call. Give it to somebody. They will enjoy it more than you expect.

And do the gift opening in the middle, never at the end. If it is last, people leave during it, and she is unwrapping presents for an audience that is visibly shrinking.

What you will need

Almost nothing, which is the other advantage of playing baby shower games online rather than in a room.

There is nothing to print, nothing to post, and nothing to hand out. Every game on this page runs from a browser tab on your screen, so the guests need only the call. No packs to mail out, no answer sheets, no pens.

That said, if you would rather have paper, every one of these games prints too, and you can send the sheets out in advance. Some hosts prefer it. These are free online baby shower games in the fullest sense: no sign-up, no email address, nothing to buy.

What people call this

Half the people who arrive here searched for something slightly different, so to be clear that you are in the right place.

Online baby shower games, baby shower online games, and baby shower games online all describe this. So do zoom baby shower games, and so does the slightly odd maternity games online, which is what a surprising number of people type. They are all the same question: which games work when everybody is on a screen.

Virtual baby shower activities is the broader version, and it takes in the toasts and the gift opening as well as the games, which is why the run sheet builder covers those too rather than just handing you a games list.

The only thing worth separating out is the choice of platform. Whether you are on Zoom, Meet or anything else changes nothing about the games. It changes only where the share-screen button is.

More baby shower games

If you are also planning the shower itself rather than just the games, the baby shower checklist covers the rest of it, and the diaper raffle still works remotely, because the tickets go out with the invitations and the draw happens on the call.

And if the shower turns out to be in person after all, the full set of baby shower games is here, including the ones that need a room.

One last thing, from someone who has now done both. A virtual baby shower is not a worse baby shower. It is a different one, and the way it goes wrong is different too. It does not fail because the games were not good enough. It fails because nobody decided what happens at 2:20, and so at 2:20, nothing did.

Decide what happens at 2:20.

What are the best virtual baby shower games?

The ones that keep people talking. Don’t Say Baby is the best of them, because it runs underneath the whole call and needs no slot on the schedule. Who Knows Mommy Best and Mommy or Daddy both work perfectly over video because they need nothing but voices and a shared screen. The emoji game is the fastest to explain, which matters more on a call than it does in a room.

How many games should a virtual baby shower have?

Three, if you are opening gifts too. Four if you are not. A game takes eight to fifteen minutes once you have explained it and dealt with the muted microphone, so three games plus a welcome, the gifts and a goodbye is a full sixty minutes.

How long should a virtual baby shower last?

An hour. Ninety minutes is too long and forty-five feels rushed. Nobody has ever left a video call wishing it had gone on longer.

Which baby shower games do not work online?

Anything that sends everyone head-down to solve something alone. Word scramble and word search are both excellent in a room and both go silent on a call, and silence on a video call feels twice as long as it is. Use them as warm-ups while people are joining, or send them out beforehand, but do not build the middle of your shower around one.

Are these virtual baby shower games free?

Yes, all of them, with no sign-up and no email address. Every game on this page runs in a browser tab, so you share your screen and play. They all print too, if you would rather send sheets out in advance.

What virtual baby shower games work for coworkers?

The ones that do not test how well anybody knows her. Don’t Say Baby, The Price Is Right and the emoji game all work because they ask nothing personal. Avoid anything that ranks how well guests know her childhood, because a colleague who joined last year will be publicly demonstrating that they know nothing about her. Keep a work shower to thirty minutes and skip the gift opening.

How do you keep score on a video call?

Give the job to someone who is not the host. The host cannot read questions, watch the chat, keep score and manage the call at the same time. Each of the games on this page keeps its own score on screen, so the scorekeeper just taps who got it right.

Should guests use the chat?

Yes, and it is the biggest advantage a virtual shower has over a real one. Guests can all answer at once without shouting over each other, you get a record of who answered first, and quiet guests take part far more than they would in a room. Any game where people submit an answer should use the chat.

When should the gifts be opened?

In the middle, never at the end. If it is last, people start leaving during it, and she ends up unwrapping presents for an audience that is visibly shrinking. Run bingo underneath it, because the gift opening is the flattest stretch of any virtual shower.

Do you need to post anything out to guests?

No. Every game here runs from your screen, so guests need nothing but the call. If you would rather they had paper, all of them print, and you can send the sheets in advance.

What is a run sheet, and do I need one?

It is a timed plan: what happens, when, and for how long. And yes. A virtual shower fails in the gaps, not in the games, and the gaps happen when nobody has decided what comes next. The builder on this page fits your games to the length of your call, tells you if you have planned too much, and then runs the shower live with a timer.