Light the fuse and pass the phone along. The remaining time is deliberately hidden — only the tightening ticks and a coarse fuse drawing hint at what is left. Whoever holds it when it blows takes the penalty.
Hiding the remaining seconds is the rule that makes this game work. If the countdown were visible, the last person could simply refuse to take it.
It works with sound off: the fuse art is bucketed into five steps, so you get a rough feel without being able to work out the seconds.
Add names and each Passed it on moves the turn along, so the explosion is recorded against a person. It also works with no names at all.
Changing the fuse while it burns voids that round — light it again with the new length.
Pass the bomb hands an object with an unknown detonation time around the table. You can pass as fast as you like, but the longer you hold it the likelier it goes off in your hands — so everyone wants it gone immediately, and rushing is exactly how it gets fumbled.
Three rules are enough: agree a fuse length, light it and pass in one direction, and whoever holds it at the blast takes the penalty. House rules like "blown up twice in a row means you are exempt" layer on fine.
A plain timer app looks like a substitute, but showing the number kills the game. If everyone can see the seconds, the last person simply does not accept the phone and the bomb never lands.
So this tool never renders the remaining value. Instead the ticks tighten as it burns — from a relaxed half-second gap to almost continuous — and the fuse drawing shrinks through only five steps. Enough to feel it, not enough to reverse-engineer the seconds.
Short (8-25s) usually blows within one lap, which suits small groups or a fast-moving round. Normal (20-60s) gives five or six people one or two laps and fits most tables.
Long (45-120s) runs two or three laps. It works when people are talking between passes or when the group is large, but a longer round also makes the penalty feel heavier.
Shop-bought bomb toys play the same canned sound every round and stop working when the battery dies. Above all, someone has to have brought it.
This one lives on a phone, so there is nothing to carry, and the blow-up tally accumulates round after round. Knowing who has detonated it three times tonight is itself part of the fun.
The instant you light it, one value is drawn from the chosen range and fixed as the detonation time. After that the value never appears on screen; it only feeds the tick spacing. The draw is uniform, so Normal can blow at 20 seconds or hold out for 60, and a short round does not make the next one longer.
Share the roster as a link and the seed travels with it, so the same sequence comes up on the other phone — handy when the table has split in two. The seed lives in the URL only and is never sent to a server: this tool has no account and no server-side storage, it all happens in the browser.
The bomb decides who, not what. If you need something for the loser to do, the random mission cards cover that; if you want an order given by number, try the king's game.
When you only need to pick who drinks, dice or spin the bottle is faster. Pass the bomb is for tables that enjoy the choosing itself, where taking a while is the point.
A fresh value is drawn inside the fuse range every round: 8-25s for short, 20-60s for normal, 45-120s for long. The same fuse gives a different result each time, and the screen never shows what is left.
Two is enough, and names are optional. With names, the person holding it at the blast is recorded and a tally builds across rounds. The roster holds up to twelve.
Yes. The toggle at the bottom of the page leaves only vibration and the fuse drawing. That is better in a quiet room, though the tension is noticeably stronger with sound on.
By default whoever blows up drinks, and a non-alcoholic drink counts. If you would rather hand out a task than a drink, pass it over to the random mission cards or the king's game.