Sprint retrospective games: Ideas, benefits, and tips

Key takeaways

• Sprint retrospective games make retrospectives more engaging, helping teams stay focused and participate more actively.
• They support continuous improvement by surfacing honest feedback and actionable insights from each sprint.
• Games work especially well for remote teams, providing structure, visual organization, and async participation.
• Sprint retrospective games add a fun, low-pressure way to reflect that keeps teams energized and engaged.
• Wrike helps teams turn retrospective insights into action by tracking feedback and improvements alongside sprint work.

What are sprint retrospective games?

Sprint retrospectives are the last step of the Scrum workflow before a team starts planning for the next sprint. Its purpose, as explained in the Scrum guide, is to “plan ways to increase quality and effectiveness.” 

Sprint retrospectives are preceded by sprint reviews, where teams review the work completed and determine whether the sprint goal was achieved. By the time the team has completed this meeting, they may begin to suffer from “sprint fatigue” and lack motivation to tackle the next step. This is where sprint retrospective games come in handy.

Sprint retrospective games introduce a fun, interactive element that helps teams reset after sprint fatigue and approach reflection with more energy and openness.

What are sprint retrospective games used for?

Sprint retrospective games help Agile and Scrum teams reflect on their work in a more engaging, structured way. Instead of relying only on open discussion, these activities introduce light gamification to encourage participation, surface honest feedback, and keep teams focused, especially after long or demanding sprints.

At their core, sprint retrospective games support the same goals as a traditional retrospective: identifying what went well, what didn’t, and what can be improved in future sprints. Games make this process more effective by lowering barriers to communication, reducing fatigue, and creating a safer environment for teams to share insights.

When used consistently, sprint retrospective games help teams:

• Increase engagement and participation: Fun, interactive formats prevent retrospectives from feeling repetitive and help teams stay focused, even when energy is low.
• Encourage honest, balanced feedback: Games create a more relaxed, low-pressure environment, making it easier for quieter team members to contribute and for teams to discuss challenges openly.
• Improve collaboration and trust: Shared activities strengthen relationships and help teams understand different perspectives.
• Surface clearer insights: Games often reveal patterns in communication, workload, and process issues that unstructured discussions may miss.
• Turn reflection into action: Many games guide teams toward specific, actionable improvements for the next sprint.
• Support remote and hybrid teams: Digital retrospective games provide structure and visibility, helping distributed teams stay aligned even when working asynchronously.

By making retrospectives more interactive and inclusive, sprint retrospective games help teams move beyond routine meetings and turn reflection into meaningful, continuous improvement, sprint after sprint.

Ideas for sprint retrospective games

Searching online for sprint retrospective games yields a surprising number of results. Here are some of the most popular and genuinely fun sprint retrospective games Scrum teams use to keep retros engaging and productive:

• LEGO retrospective
• Explorers, shoppers, vacationers, prisoners (esvp)
• Retrospective bingo
• Start, stop, continue
• Mad, sad, glad
• Sailboat retrospective
• Four Ls (liked, learned, lacked, longed for)
• Timeline retrospective
• Dot voting retrospective
• One word retrospective
• Pass the user story

There are many sprint retrospective games teams can use to keep retrospectives engaging, focused, and productive. Below are a variety of proven retrospective games used by Scrum teams, Agile coaches, and remote teams.

LEGO retrospective

Teams build models using LEGO bricks to represent how the sprint felt or what stood out most. Each person explains their model, sparking discussion around challenges, successes, and ideas for improvement. This fun game encourages creativity and helps surface insights that might not come up in traditional discussions.

Getting started in Wrike: For remote teams, each participant can create a Wrike task or card representing their “model” of the sprint using images or short descriptions. Team members explain their cards in comments, making it easy to surface themes and group insights for follow-up.

Explorers, shoppers, vacationers, prisoners (ESVP)

Team members anonymously choose a persona that best reflects how they felt during the sprint:

• Explorers: Looking for new ideas and learning
• Shoppers: Hoping to take away something useful
• Vacationers: Happy to attend but not deeply invested
• Prisoners: Attending because they have to. 

This game helps Scrum masters quickly gauge team engagement and adjust facilitation accordingly.

Getting started in Wrike: Teams can run ESVP in Wrike by collecting anonymous responses through a form or private tasks. Results can be reviewed in a shared dashboard to quickly gauge engagement and adjust facilitation.

Retrospective bingo

Retrospective bingo replaces numbers with common Agile terms, phrases, or behaviors. As they come up during the meeting, participants mark their cards. This game adds fun and humor while highlighting patterns in team conversations and recurring issues.

Getting started in Wrike: Create a shared Wrike board listing common Agile terms or behaviors as tasks. As topics come up, participants react or comment, turning recurring patterns into visible discussion points.

Start, stop, continue

One of the most popular sprint retrospective formats, this activity asks teams to identify:

• What to start doing
• What to stop doing
• What to continue doing. 

It’s simple, fast, and effective for turning discussion into actionable improvements.

Getting started in Wrike: Set up a Wrike Kanban board with start, stop, and continue columns. Items added during the retrospective can be converted directly into assigned tasks for the next sprint.

Mad, sad, glad

Team members reflect on the sprint by sharing what made them feel mad, sad, or glad. This emotional framing helps teams uncover deeper issues related to morale, workload, and collaboration.

Getting started in Wrike: Use a Wrike board with three sections for mad, sad, and glad. Team members add short notes as cards, making emotional trends easy to spot and discuss.

Sailboat retrospective

The sprint is visualized as a sailboat:

• Wind: Things that helped the team move forward
• Anchors: Things that slowed them down
• Rocks: Risks or obstacles ahead. This format works well for strategic reflection and future planning.

Getting started in Wrike: Represent wind, anchors, and rocks as columns in Wrike. Teams add cards for each category and prioritize risks or blockers using comments or custom fields, making the retrospective easy and fun.

Four Ls (liked, learned, lacked, and longed for)

This game encourages balanced feedback by asking team members to reflect on:

• What they liked
• What they learned
• What was missing
• What they wish they had. It’s especially useful for new teams or after major changes.

Getting started in Wrike: Create four sections in Wrike and have team members add feedback cards under each one. “Lacked” and “longed for” items can then be turned into improvement tasks.

Timeline retrospective

Teams build a visual timeline of the sprint, marking key events, decisions, and moments. This helps everyone align on what actually happened and identify cause-and-effect patterns.

Getting started in Wrike: Build a simple sprint timeline in Wrike using tasks ordered by date. Comments on each task capture key moments, decisions, or blockers for group reflection.

Dot voting retrospective

After generating ideas or issues, team members vote using dots or emojis to prioritize topics. This keeps retrospectives focused and ensures the most important issues are addressed first.

Getting started in Wrike: After gathering feedback in Wrike, use reactions or a custom field to vote on the most important topics. Sorting by votes helps teams focus on what matters most.

One word retrospective

Each team member describes the sprint using a single word. While simple, this exercise quickly reveals overall sentiment and can serve as a warm-up or closing activity.

Getting started in Wrike: Team members can add a single word as a comment or task in Wrike. Reviewing responses together gives a fast snapshot of sprint sentiment.

“Pass the user story” (online-friendly)

Inspired by storytelling games, team members take turns adding context or feedback to a user story from the sprint. This works well in digital tools and helps teams reflect on how work evolved during execution. 

Getting started in Wrike: An idea for an online version that can be set up and played on Wrike’s Kanban view is a “pass the user story” game based on the popular kids’ game “pass the story.”

Sprint retrospective games for remote teams

Remote sprint retrospectives need more structure than in-person sessions. Without a shared space, participation can drop, and feedback can get scattered across time zones. Sprint retrospective games provide clear formats and visual organization that help remote teams stay engaged and ensure everyone has a voice through digital collaboration.

Digital tools make this easier. Teams can use Wrike’s Kanban boards or Whiteboard to collect and group feedback, comments to discuss insights in context, and custom workflows to turn retrospective outcomes into actionable improvements for the next sprint. With the right structure, remote teams can keep retrospectives focused, inclusive, and tied directly to execution.

How to choose the right sprint retrospective game

Not every sprint retrospective game works for every team or situation. Choosing the right game depends on your team’s size, the complexity of the sprint, and how your team is feeling at the end of the iteration. Matching the game to the context helps ensure retrospectives stay productive rather than feeling forced or repetitive with these facets in mind:

• Team size
• Sprint complexity
• Energy level and sprint fatigue
• Remote vs. in-person teams

Team size

Smaller teams often benefit from open-ended games that encourage discussion and deeper reflection, such as timeline-based or storytelling activities. Larger teams may need more structured games that collect feedback anonymously or in categories, helping prevent dominant voices from taking over and ensuring balanced participation.

Sprint complexity

If a sprint involves many dependencies, handoffs, or technical challenges, choose a game that helps surface process issues and bottlenecks. Games that group feedback by themes such as “what slowed us down” or “what needs improvement” work well for complex sprints, while simpler sprints may only require lightweight reflection formats.

Energy level and sprint fatigue

After an intense sprint, low-effort games that focus on quick wins, highlights, or mood checks can help prevent burnout. When energy is high, more interactive or creative games can encourage deeper insights and stronger engagement. Adjusting the format helps keep retrospectives constructive rather than exhausting. Sometimes the best retrospective game is simply the one that feels the most fun for the team in that moment, especially after a demanding sprint.

Remote vs. in-person teams

Remote teams often benefit from games that support asynchronous input and visual organization, giving everyone time to contribute before discussion begins. In-person teams may lean toward more interactive, hands-on games that rely on live conversation and collaboration. Choosing a game that fits your team’s working environment helps maintain participation and clarity.

Turn sprint retrospectives into action with Wrike

Sprint retrospective games help teams go beyond reflection by encouraging honest feedback, stronger collaboration, and continuous improvement. When retrospectives are engaging and consistent, teams are more likely to identify meaningful insights and turn them into clear next steps for the next sprint.

Wrike helps teams move from discussion to execution by capturing retrospective outcomes in one place. With shared Kanban boards, an interactive Whiteboard, real-time comments, and customizable workflows, teams can assign action items, track progress, and ensure improvements don’t get lost after the meeting.

If you want sprint retrospectives that lead to real, measurable change, Wrike provides the structure teams need to turn feedback into results through our interactive dashboards, sprint after sprint.