skribbl io is a popular fun online game where you earn points by guessing what other people draw or letting people guess what you draw. Naturally, drawing with a mouse or a console results in horrible, complicated drawings, so if you're playing with friends and all are on a call together, you'll have a lot of fun. While the point of playing skribbl is fun, playing well and beating friends is a very rewarding experience. Here are my tips and strategies for doing just that. In each section, I have some general principles, then specific techniques.
You will need to create a private room to be able to invite your friends. You'll need to click "Create Private Room". Don't click "Play!" because that will take you to a random room.
At the beginning of your turn, you have 3 words to choose from. Since the draw is a round where many points can be accumulated, this choice is very important. These are the questions you should ask when choosing a word:
How easy is your word to guess?
The first instinct is to choose the word that is easiest to draw. This is often the most important consideration, but it is also important to envision how you will draw a word and how well the player will interpret your drawing. Usually, how easy something is to draw has something to do with how it will be interpreted, but there are some cases where this is not the case. For example, a dandelion flower may be easy to draw, but the word length and ambiguity of a simple yellow or white flower can make it harder to guess. Words that are easy to draw and also easy to guess are ideal words. Of course, much of the "predictability" depends on your drawing skills, but your life will be easier thanks to a good choice of words.
As demonstrated in the dandelion example, the length of the word you choose is important. Choosing a three-letter word can be an advantage because doing so will significantly narrow the number of words that can be guessed. Picking a three-letter word also increases the chance that a person guessing random three-letter words might get the message “___ is close”, at which point they can fool other players with guessing similar words. Longer words are more nuanced in their difficulty. I want to see a graph of guesses vs word length. At a certain length (I say about 7 letters) the players stop counting how many letters they need to fill and just guess the words that might match.
How many ways can be drawn from that?
If you have difficulty with 3 difficult words, consider different ways to draw each of them. For example, I recently chose “fountain” and painted a drinking fountain very unsuccessfully, when I was able to draw the kind of fountain you can find in the square. Also, compound words can be easier to visualize when drawn separately than together (e.g. drawing a sword + fish instead of an ambiguous swordfish). Thinking outside is necessary to get out of bad situations.
Who are you drawing for?
Finally, the group must be considered when choosing a word (this can usually only be done if you are playing with friends). If you choose a word that only one person in the group will figure out quickly, it gives others a short time to guess the word, which means you will lose points. This can also be used to your advantage; If someone you're competing with doesn't watch the show or know an insider joke, you can exclude them with your choice of words.
