This game is a fun guessing game that you should definitely try out. You can be creative and additionally practice your acting skills. It is perfect, for a short school break or when you meet your friends after school and you are searching for a fun activity.

What do you need?
You don’t need any materials to play “King of 12 swords”! This is a big advantage since you do not need to prepare anything for this game and you can also play it where ever you want.

Who plays?
There is no minimum or maximum amount of players for the game. Everything works, however I would recommend between 4 and 20 participants.

How to play “King with 12 swords”
The first thing you will have to do is to choose a king. You can do that for example by playing a round of “rock, paper, scissors”, choosing the youngest player, or voting, it is fully up to you.
The game starts with the rest of the children that will ask the king:
“King, king, with the twelve swords, what time is it?”
And the king answers them:
“time for work”
Then, the children begin to imitate a work, without speaking. It is also possible to act out the same activity with two or more people. The king has to guess what work they do.
If the king can not figure it out, he or she has to imitate an animal of the players choice as a punishment. You can be as cruel as you want and for example let the king crawl on the floor while imitating a worm.
After a few rounds you can change the king and with that the player who has to guess what the others are doing.

Variations
As in every pantomime game, there is a word or a topic that should be imitated. In this game it is usually “work”, but you can change that if you want. A variation of this game could be that the king can choose what time it is: “time to play”, “time to do sport”, “time to eat” etc. Depending on what the king says, the children have to imitate a game, a sport, or a food, and whatever he or she can think of.