How to play Barely Explained
The rule is short: someone gets a movie in secret and writes a vague description. Everyone else guesses. The cruel part is the scoring — the describer earns most when almost nobody gets it, and nothing at all when everybody does.
The idea in three sentences
One player per round is the describer. Only they see the title that was drawn. They write a description — without using the forbidden words — and everyone else sends in a guess.
If nobody gets it, you wrote something impossible and you score nothing. If everybody gets it, you gave the game away and you also score nothing. The gold sits exactly in the middle: a description that exactly one person can crack.
Exactly 1 correct guess is worth 100 points to the describer. That is the game's maximum, and it is deliberate: the fun is in writing something almost impossible, but not entirely impossible.
A round, step by step
- 1The game draws a title from whichever categories the host enabled and shows it only to the current describer.
- 2The describer writes the description. The box refuses to submit if the text is shorter than 10 characters or contains any of that title's forbidden words.
- 3The description goes out to everyone. The title and the forbidden words stay hidden — the server sends the secret only to the describer, never in the payload the others receive.
- 4Each guesser submits a guess. You find out immediately whether you got it.
- 5The round closes when every connected guesser has guessed, or when the host pushes it forward.
- 6The result screen shows the title, who got it and the points for the round. Then the describing turn passes to the next player.
The scoring table
The describer is paid for how rare the correct guess was. The more people get it, the less it is worth — and both extremes are worth zero.
| How many got it | Describer points |
|---|---|
| Nobody | 0 |
| 1 person | 100 |
| 2 people | 75 |
| 3 people | 50 |
| 4 people | 25 |
| 5 or more | 10 |
| Everybody | 0 |
The other side of the table is simple: every correct guess is worth 50 points to the guesser, no matter how many other people also got it. A wrong guess costs nothing — guess as wildly as you like.
"Everybody got it" zeroes the describer even if that means just two people. In a small room, a description that is too easy costs you more than it would in a big one.
Forbidden words
Every title in the catalog carries a list of words the describer cannot use — usually the words of the title itself plus the most obvious terms attached to it. They show up in red on the describer's screen.
- The check ignores accents and capitals, so spelling variants do not help.
- It also catches words inside words. If "ring" is forbidden, "rings" is blocked too.
- The description has to be at least 10 characters long. A shrug does not get through.
How a guess is checked
The game does not demand a perfectly typed title. Your guess is compared against the localized title, the original English title, and a list of alternative names stored in the catalog.
- Accents, capitals and punctuation are ignored in the comparison.
- Typos are tolerated up to a point: a guess passes if it is at least 85% similar to one of the accepted answers. In practice, a letter or two off in a mid-length title still counts.
- Popular nicknames usually work — many titles store the abbreviations people actually use out loud.
The five game modes
The host picks the mode in the lobby, before the game starts. They all use the same scoring table.
Classic
The default. One describer per round, the turn rotates through the players, everyone else guesses.
Everyone describes
Nobody sits around waiting. In the same round, every player gets a different title and writes their description in parallel. The descriptions are then opened one at a time and the room guesses on each. It is the fastest mode for big groups.
Chaos
Like classic, except each round draws a mandatory writing style. You might land on a crime news report, an angry customer complaint, family group-chat gossip, a medicine leaflet, a classified ad, a clickbait headline, a review by someone who clearly slept through the middle, or a seven-year-old's book report.
Cards
Each player gets a hand of five titles and chooses which one to describe when their turn comes. It changes the game completely: you can hold the easy title back for a crowded room and burn the impossible one when few people are around.
Daily
The single-player mode, outside of rooms. One challenge a day, the same for everybody, with three attempts. It lives at /diario and needs no room and no other people.
Categories
The catalog holds more than 2,700 titles and goes well beyond cinema. In the lobby you tick which categories go into the draw, and you can combine several in the same room.
- Movies — the biggest slice, from blockbusters to cult picks.
- Series — TV classics through to last year's releases.
- Games — most console and PC generations.
- Anime — from the obvious shounen to studio films.
- Cartoons — western animation, TV and cinema.
Enabling a single category makes the game harder, not easier: once everyone knows it is a game, you lose the context clue a description normally gives away for free.
Rooms, codes and hosts
- Every room has a 4-letter code. Anyone with the code can join, even a private room.
- A public room shows up in the open-rooms browser and anyone can join it without a code.
- The host is whoever created the room. They control the settings, start the match and can force the round forward.
- The default is 5 rounds, adjustable from 1 to 20.
- The describe and guess timers show on screen as a reference, but the game does not end a phase on its own when the clock runs out — the round closes when the host advances it or when the whole room has guessed.
There are no accounts, passwords or sign-ups: you pick a nickname and play. If your connection drops, coming back in the same browser returns you to the same room with the same score.
Where to go next
If you have the rules down and want to write better descriptions, the description guide is the next stop — it shows why most bad descriptions fail in exactly the same way.