How to play Bad Artist (Họa Sĩ Dỏm): draw it, guess it, laugh at it

A turn, drawing, guessing, hints, points and tips, for 3 to 10 players.

Updated 22 October 2026

Bad Artist is a draw and guess party game for 3 to 10 players. On your turn you draw a secret word, everyone else races to guess it, and nobody has to be good at drawing: the worse the cat, the louder the table. Its Vietnamese name, Họa Sĩ Dỏm, means the phoney artist.

In GatherPlay's Bad Artist you draw with your finger on your phone, and every line shows up live on the shared screen and on every other phone. Guesses are typed on phones. The server keeps the word secret and checks every guess, so nobody can peek or argue.

The goal

Have the most points after the last round. You score by guessing other people's drawings fast and by drawing so that people guess yours.

A turn, step by step

1. The drawer's phone shows three words: easy, medium and hard. They have 15 seconds to pick one; if they don't, the easy one is taken.
2. The drawer draws the word on their phone. Everyone sees the drawing as it happens. The word is only on the drawer's phone.
3. Everyone else types guesses. A wrong guess shows in the shared feed, so others can build on it.
4. A right guess scores, shows “Sofia got it!” (never the word) and that player can stop guessing.
5. The turn ends when everyone has got it or the time runs out (80 seconds by default). The word and the points show for 5 seconds, then the next player draws.

In each round everyone draws once. A game is 3 rounds, or 2 with 7 or more players; the host can choose 1 to 5.

Drawing

• 12 colours, 4 brush sizes, an eraser, undo and clear.
• No letters, numbers or spelling the word out with gestures. The host can skip a turn that breaks the rule, and nobody scores it.
• Draw the big shape first, then the detail that gives it away: ears and whiskers make a cat, a handle makes a cup.

Guessing

• Spaces, capitals and a leading “a” or “the” don't matter, so “a Fire Truck” counts for fire truck.
• The game is in one language, set by the host: English or Vietnamese. Only answers in that language count, so in an English game “cat” is right and “con mèo” is not. Vietnamese can be typed without accents.
• Very close guesses, like one typo or a plural, get a private “So close!” that only you see. It never shows in the feed.
• A guess holds at most 40 characters.

Letter hints

From the start, everyone sees blanks for the word: one per letter, with gaps between words. As the time runs down, a few letters turn up, the first after about a third of the time. The host can set hints to normal, few or off.

Points

• Guessers: 100 to 300 points, more the faster you are, and 50 more for the first right guess.
• The drawer: up to 300 points, the share of guessers who got it. Everyone guessing it earns the full 300.
• A skipped turn, or a drawer who leaves, scores nothing for anyone.

Tips

• Drawers: pick the word you can draw, not the one you know best. A medium word drawn clearly beats a hard word nobody gets.
• Guessers: read the feed. A wrong guess like “dog” tells you the drawing is an animal.
• Use the blank count. Two words of 4 and 5 letters rule out a lot.
• Type early and often: only right guesses score, and wrong ones cost nothing.

Playing apart

Start a Discord or Google Meet call and share the shared screen's browser tab, or skip it: every phone shows the drawing live too, so everyone can play from their own phone with the code.

Start a game

1. Open GatherPlay on the TV and host a Bad Artist game.
2. 3 to 10 players join with the QR code on the screen.
3. Pick the word list (English or Vietnamese), the rounds, the drawing time and the hints, and start.