It’s the one you’ve all been waiting for! The 2020 Virtual Christmas Family Fortunes game – with 41 Family Fortunes Questions completely free to download and play! When I had the idea to create a Virtual Family Fortunes game on the blog; those of you in my Corona Parents Lockdown group went a little bit nuts for it; enjoying answering my family fortunes questions and helping create my surveys of 100 people!
This Christmas is certainly going to be different to any other Christmas we have ever experienced to date and whilst at the time of writing; we don’t know exactly how much families will be able to mix; it’s looking unlikely that lot of different households will be able to gather together in 2020. Over the last few weeks; I have been creating lots of VIRTUAL Christmas activities and games that you can play online with your families; helping everyone feel more connected and together even when they are physically apart. You can check out the full lit of virtual Christmas activities here; the most popular of course is likely to be the Virtual Family Fortunes Game 2020.
I am assuming most of you know the classic Family Fortunes game show; but in case you don’t here is absolutely everything you need to know to play Virtual Family Fortunes with your family this Christmas.
How to play Family Fortunes
The Family Fortunes game is a classic game show that has been shown since I was a girl back in the 80s; and still runs on TV today with Gino Di’Campo as the host.
2 teams (ideally from different families or parts of the same extended family that can split into 2 teams of around 5 members each) compete to win normally cash or prizes by trying to guess the most common responses to Family Fortunes questions posed to the public.
For each question a survey of 100 people are asked a question, and the most popular answers are listed on the bored. Team members must attempt to guess all of the answers to earn points and prizes.
What you need to play Virtual Family Fortunes
Two Families / Teams
First, and perhaps most crucially, you meed to decide who is making up each team, and agree two distinct teams to play. The numbers are up to you, but to give everyone the best chance of being included, 5 members in each family or group is recommended.
Virtual Conferencing Tools
Secondly, make sure everyone has downloaded Zoom (or any other virtual conferencing tool of your choice) on to their phones, laptop or tablet. You will need one person to nominate themselves as the host, and create a meeting link to send around to all participants. As the two teams are unlikely to be physically together in 2020, it may be helpful to ask team members to wear a particular colour e.g. RED or GREEN so that the host can clearly identify people from each team whilst they cant stand physically together.
At the time of writing, Zoom has lifted the 40 minute maximum, but if for any reason this changes, you can set up another call and have a short interval half way through!
Virtual Family Fortunes Questions and Answers
The host should download Virtual Family Fortunes questions and answers, as created in the Corona Parents Lockdown Group. You can choose your Virtual Family Fortunes questions and answers and print them off from the bank of questions below:
DOWNLOAD THEM HERE –> Virtual Family Fortunes Question Bank
There are over 40 Family Fortunes questions to choose from, and you can choose the 10 questions that you feel are most appropriate for your family / age group / players (as some have elicited more cheeky responses than others!) PLEASE do check them before you play as I don’t want any children asking difficult questions – 2020 has been hard enough lol!! You will notice that some questions have more answers than others. Those with more answers are best suited to the final round.
A host
One person will be acting as the host, reading the Family Fortunes questions (or ideally sharing them on their screen), navigating the families through each round and keeping track of the scores.
Optional Extras for your game
Sound Effects: If you want to make your Virtual Family Fortunes 2020 as authentic as possible, you can ask family members to download the FREE Family Fortunes Sound App here 🙂
There are two play modes on this app, the fastest finger sound for Players, and the Top Answer, Correct Answer and Wrong Answer app for host Mode. At a minimum, the host mode works really well.
Prizes – You may wish to have a prize for the winners (you could even ask every participant to pay a small fee to take part which would create a prize kitty for the winners) which would make the stakes and competitive nature of the game even more exciting with the chance to double their contribution!
To make things funny you can also choose to do some spot prizes on your answers.
Timer – Each contestant has 20 seconds to say their answers – so the host may wish to have a timer on your phone to hand, as if they take too long this will result in a wrong answer.
Visual Board – To make it as interactive as possible, we have decided to create our own whiteboard style posters with the questions on – there may be an easier way of doing this, (you can even share your screen) but we wanted to get the children involved too and help peeling off the answers. Alternatively you can use them on a whiteboard / poster and write them on as they are revealed with their respective scores.
How to Play the Virtual Family Fortunes Game
Fastest Finger First
Pick one player from each family / team to play fastest finger first – and choose one question from the Bank which can be used for the first round.
Ask them to have their fastest finger first button on the Family Fortunes App ready in front of them and the host asks the question (or just shout out if you aren’t using this)
The players BUZZ on their app, and shouts out their answer. Th host needs to pay attention here, as whoever answers first gets the opportunity to see if their answer is on the board.
If the answer they say is the top answer on the board, they can decide as a family whether to play or pass to the other team (they can discuss between them)
If their answer is not on the top answer on the board, then the other player gets a chance.
Whichever team members answer is the highest on the board is the team that gets to play first.
Game Play Round 1
In each round, a question from a survey of 100 parents I asked in the Corona Parents Lockdown Group will be shown to the whole group, with a set number of top answers the playing family needs to guess. (Please be aware – not ALL answers are included as this would be impossible; just the top or most common answers; so scores wont always add up to 100).
The playing family must attempt to find all the answers on the board, passing through each of the family members with 20 seconds each to pick their guess. They score points for every correct answer along the way.
If they get an answer that is on the board, they score than number of points.
If they score the top answer (you can choose if you’d like to give a spot prize)
If they answer an option that wasn’t one of the top answers, they get a incorrect cross (uh-uh sound on the app).
They also get a strike if they don’t answer within the 20 seconds (you can make this longer if you prefer if you have younger or older players!)
If they get 3 incorrect answers, the game play stops, and the other team have the chance to STEAL – and win that round by finding one other correct answer from the board.
For this part of the game when played virtually, the team members can simply be asked by the host to say their guess, and the person acting as the Team Leader decides which one they would like to go with.
If they chose an answer that is on the board they STEAL the points that the family had collated so far including the points for the correct answer.
Game Play Round 2
Repeat the fastest finger first game to see which family goes first in the next round, choosing a new question from the downloadable question bank above.
Repeat the game play steps above, keeping note of the total scores.
How many rounds should you play in Virtual Family Fortunes?
How many rounds you play is entirely up to you. On the programme it’s the first family to 300 points that wins. My personal plan is to play 4 rounds or the first person to 400.
Double Points Round
To mix things up a little the last round is DOUBLE MONEY (or in this case DOUBLE POINTS), which gives families who may be behind the chance to catch up.
Game play is as above only the scores are DOUBLED.
FINAL ROUND – Big Money
Once the winning team has been determined, they need to play the BIG MONEY round, or the round for which they have the chance to win the ultimate prize (what this is, is up to you but could be CASH if each player pays to take part as mentioned above)
For this you need to pick two family members from the winning team who want to play, and one needs to leave the room *or in this case, leave the virtual call (or get placed in the waiting room.) They can dial back in when prompted (texted!) but must not be able to hear or see what is going on.
For the final round they are asked 5 questions (again 100 people surveyed were asked…) and must answer as many as they can with the first response that comes to mind in 15 seconds. The host must use a timer to ensure this is accurate.
Once the 15 seconds is up, the host goes through and says:
You said X, the survey says……. (and then use the Correct button or the Incorrect answer button on the app) as they reveal the score for the answer.
To make this part visual for other contestants, we will be writing their responses on a white board / cardboard – and then writing on the scores if applicable next to each answer.
If it is a TOP answer, again you may want to offer a prize for families that get ALL the most top answers (we don’t expect you to extend to a real car, but something like these mini Tesco toy delivery vans are quite amusing)
Once the scores have been revealed, the second family member can come back on to the call, and the host can tell them how many points the other player has achieved, and be given the opportunity to attempt it themselves.
The second player get 20 seconds, to allow for any duplicated answers.
If between the two players, the team scores more than 200 points, they win the prize / competition!
In Summary
Virtual Family Fortunes does require a bit of a preparation before hand, and you need to have a think about the best way the visual element will work for your family and the people taking part – there is no right or wrong way to do it.
One thing is for sure, I am really looking forward to taking on my role as Family Fortunes Host and I really hope that the game brings some fun and laughter for lots of families this Christmas.
Don’t forget to check out my other Virtual Christmas Ideas here – including a Virtual Christmas Quiz and Virtual Festive Picture Bingo!
