In this article, we share ideas for games in the storis, which will be useful for everyone who runs social media accounts and wants to increase user engagement. Before we start, remember that game ideas in Instagram can be combined with each other. For example, in a series of storis use a test, animation and sliders at once.
Game ideas in Instagram posts
Prediction
A table or pyramid is created from several items-images. Subscribers are required to choose a number and write it in the comments. A community manager from the account sends pre-prepared predictions.
Guess the item by emoji.
We take a known item (like a movie) and encode it into an emoji. You can take the name of the movie or familiar images to make it easier for subscribers to guess. This idea is universal and will work on any account subject.
Find What’s Hidden
Several objects are hidden in the image or you are asked to find the differences between the two frames.
Count the objects
This idea usually involves creating an animation or video of moving objects. The task of the subscriber is to count the number and write the answer in the comments.
Brands often use their products in creatives, such as Chupa Chups or McDonald’s.
Thimbles
Some object is hidden in one of three cups, mixed together and asked subscribers to guess where the item is hidden. That’s what Danone did – it even made a special video, while McDonald’s limited itself to animation.
The Labyrinth
The goal of the subscriber is to choose the best way out of the maze out of several variants and write the answer in the comments.
Find the hidden word
Idea: Make a table of letters with one or more words in it. The words are usually stacked horizontally or vertically. You can hide just one word – it will be a puzzle. Or several that characterize the subscribers in some way.
Guess what’s hidden.
A brand product (or some commonly known item) is “overwritten” or cropped in the editor so that it can only be guessed from an outline or a single detail.
Make a choice.
The principle of the idea for this game on Instagram is to ask subscribers to make a choice between two positions. The answers can be given by emoji in the comments.
Map
An interesting idea for a game in Instagram, which invites subscribers to build a route of the hero following the instructions in the text of the post. On the field, you can place both brand products and something abstract (for example, an exit). You can also do storytelling on such maps (the hero goes somewhere and finds something) and even produce several posts in one series.
Test
A popular idea for a game on Instagram. A number of items are numbered on the creative and subscribers have to guess what they are. The answers are written in the comments.
Assemble a set.
From a pack of themed emoji, subscribers are invited to assemble a set to suit their purpose or mood.
Connect the variants.
A variation of the puzzle idea where you have to guess which picture outline belongs to the items on the list. Learn more about creating logic games in posts in our article “Idea for a Post. Riddles and puzzles.”
Puzzle
The idea: to offer the same puzzle, only to assemble it by force of imagination. That’s why they don’t usually make them complicated – McDonald’s, for example, uses only six pieces.
Game ideas in Instagram storis
Test
A series of storis, where the answers ask you to choose one of several suggested options. The topic of the idea can be anything: movies, TV series, paintings, car brands, brand product names and so on.
Theme quiz
A quiz is an entertaining test of your subscribers’ knowledge. The key word is entertaining. For the idea to work, the questions have to be chosen so that the person wants to answer them, and if he does not know something, he would get the answer right away.
So usually the scheme is: first post – question, second post – answer. It’s great if all the questions are united by one theme. For example, as Volvo did in the quiz about the safety of their car brand.
True or myth.
Subscriber should read a fact from a biography, history or science and answer, true or not. As with a themed quiz, it’s best to provide the answer right away. The “true or myth” format is a great idea for playing games with Instagram followers on commercial accounts – you can talk about a brand, product or service.
Colorize Stories.
This idea is a variant of user-generated content. For starters, a picture is posted on the account asking subscribers to color or edit it somehow. You could even produce an entire themed series (for example, as Medusa did for September 1st with the “let’s color pictures from textbooks” storis). We repost the best art back in the stories or save it in the highlighters. That way both engagement increases and subscribers see feedback from the brand or account.
Bingo
An interesting game idea on Instagram that rarely gets used. Bingo is a great option to quickly stimulate the creation of UGC (user-generated content) for an Instagram account.
To make this idea come true, we take a popular topic (e.g. New Year’s Eve to-do list), create a table (make salads, buy a New Year’s Eve outfit, think about the hangover 🙂 and post it in the posts, inviting subscribers to check the completed items. The best and the most interesting things we repost on our account. By the way, about how to make reposts on Instagram (everything there is not as obvious as it seems at first glance) read in our step-by-step instruction.
Make a choice (slider).
Invite subscribers to choose one of several options using the choice slider. First, come up with an idea for a game, such as, in the case of Leroy Merlin from the example below, how subscribers spend their time at the cottage.
Then in a series of storis ask thematic questions (what do you usually do at the cottage, how is the construction going, what do you plant in the garden, and so on) and give options using the slider. The effect is simple: subscribers are engaged in the storis, and the account owner at least learns a little more about his audience.
Randomizer
The idea of a game with subscribers where you have to take a screenshot and show what he or she has dropped. Or just pause the storisers. It’s not hard to make such a storis: just load 20-30 frames with answers in any graphic editor and simply add them to the same video sequence at 1 frame per second.
The idea for the topic can be anything: what kind of coffee to order today at your restaurant, what to watch tonight, or what word characterizes you as a person. Below is an example from Medusa, who has taken lines from Morgenstern’s songs and suggests guessing what 2020 will be like next.
Multistep Voting.
An extremely interesting idea that Medusa often practices in its stories. It usually offers a multi-step voting process where the entire audience is asked to choose one thing by elimination. To do this, a huge table is created (you can see part of it in the example), and subscribers choose. The choice is made in blocks of several options, and the answers are taken into account right along the way. The most popular answers from blocks are collected into new blocks of several choices, and the voting goes on until there’s one left. The end result is constant activity all day in stories – cool!
Stories are released within a few hours, based on the results of the blocks. In general, such a game in Instagram storis requires the presence and control of SMM-manager, but judging by how often it is practiced by Medusa – the content is definitely like subscribers.
Visual Storis Games
This is a type of game ideas that kind of simulate the user’s actions with the help of animation. Interactive elements in them cannot be created using Instagram tools, so you either have to use special editors (such as Canva) or order them from specialists.
But animated stories certainly attract attention with their level of performance: it’s one thing to vote in thousands of the same-type posts, and another to see, in fact, a short animated film.
Games with a change of frame
A bit of theory: animation is static frames that move at a certain speed (usually 24-60 frames per second). Knowing this, you can create micro-stories on static pictures. For example, on the first still image, draw an unlit kitchen, and on the second, a kitchen with the lights on. At the bottom, show a fake action button that sort of signifies that going to the next story will turn the lights on. See how this idea of playing with subscribers on Instagram is implemented by Leroy Merlin:
Another option: this is when there is a single static background on which objects are superimposed. For example, the first post shows a wall without wallpaper, the next one with wallpaper, the next one with furniture, and so on, until the finished bow of the room is assembled.
Guess the object by emoji.
One of the most popular games in storis. The idea: take a popular movie, game, TV series (or brand product) and encode it into an emoji. It is better, of course, to encrypt what everyone knows – most often it’s movies. Well, and commercial accounts can combine movies close to the sphere of activity of the company. For example, restaurants can guess movies about chefs, and car brands – about motorsports, rally and racers.
Guess what’s hidden
Here, it’s common to hide an item of some sort with putty through graphic editors. In order to guess, you can use familiar outlines of the object or sounds.
Guess the Sound
An interesting mechanic that asks you to guess not the visual side of the story, but the sound side. To do this, you need to prepare in advance a stopis with recorded sound – you can use files from libraries with free music (for example, wav-library.net). Next, you need to overlay the audio on the finished post. Read more about photo and video editors in our super detailed article “Photo and Video Editing in Instagram” with tips and trends.
Guess the subject by the detail
You can hide the subject by masking it in graphic editors, or you can just frame it. That is, select a small fragment from the finished photo, crop and enlarge it. This format will work fine for commercial posts, so you can make guesses about a brand’s product or goods. For example, like LADA did in its Instagram account, offering subscribers to guess the car brand’s model range by the headlights and other body elements.
How to make a game by yourself
In posts
To create games in posts you will need a graphics editor. You can use Canva or any other. As an example, let’s assemble a game in the style of “Maps”. To do this, we will need to:
Make a grid in the editor and draw characters on it
Write instructions in the post
On the grid in the creative added a character and three options for the outcome. Now we draw a route for ourselves – on the basis of this we will write an instruction-key to the game.
Now we come up with a story and publish a post.
“Today Pasha went on a trip! But what awaits him along the way? A hidden chest, an encounter with a dragon, or a road through the woods? Help the hero find his way using the following directions:
- Cage to the right.
- One box down.
- Two cells down.
- Three cells to the left
- Where will Pasha end up? Write in the comments!”
The story about the hero can be continued, for example, in the next post the action will take place in the forest and the hero-Pasha will have to get out of there.
You can also learn more about creating games (and see other examples) in our article “Games on Instagram – a legal and interesting way to engage followers.
In stories.
In the mobile app of Instagram, the following interactive elements are available in the Story Editor for creating games:
1. quiz.
You can add up to four answer choices to a question. In order to choose the right one, you need to tap on it so that it turns green.
2. poll
The poll invites you to choose two opposite options (e.g. yes or no). But you can also use it to generally choose between something dual. For example, day or night, rest or work, and so on.
3. Slider
The slider has two usage scenarios. The first uses a swipe to express a degree (okay, great, cool!). The second scenario: using the slider, you select an answer from several options. The options are written in text directly above the slider.
More stickers to help.
A “Questions” sticker also comes in handy to collect feedback after the game or learn something from subscribers. A Feedback sticker comes in handy for announcing a new game.
Based on these tools, you can build a simple test game for subscribers. First, let’s define the theme of the game. Let’s take soap operas as an example as a universal theme. Subscribers need to guess the names of recent TV series from the frames.
Needed:
A few frames from the TV series.
Instagram mobile app.
Photo editor (optional).
You can go straight to the storis editor of Instagram mobile app, or assemble the backgrounds in a photo editor (for example, in Canva). We’ll assemble basic backgrounds with animation, and then substitute interactive elements for voting in the storis editor.
Next, we save to the device, go to Instagram, and go into storis publishing mode. We add “Poll” and “Slider” stickers. In games, there is such a thing as gameplay – it is the job of the crawler to guide the user and not necessarily to give a choice. For example, the question “Shall we play?” should not offer a choice of “yes” and “no.” Remember that you’re running the game, so it’s best to direct subscribers to move on. The answer options to the question “Shall we play?” yes and of course, let’s go and fine and so on.
The structure of this game is as follows: introduction, main part, results. So, in the introduction above, we invited to the game and told its rules. Next is the game itself, where you have to guess shots from the movie. We do it through the “Test” sticker.
The final part – summarize the results (sticker “Slider”), ask the subscribers a question (was able to pass the test or not) and announce the next game.
Conclusion
Games in Instagram allow you to increase the engagement of followers – they make clicks in the storis and increase the total number of touches in the profile. And if the game was posted as a post, the number of comments usually increases.
You can see engagement and reach growth statistics in the Instagram app, but that’s general or private. We have a special service for SMM people Datafan, which allows you to create dynamic reports. You just need to connect your account and use a ready-made template or customize your dashboard. Learn more about the service and report creation in our article “Guide: how to make reports on content in social networks and analyze them”.