Blog: what to play online, and how
Rules explained, picks for every group size, and practical advice — from “what to run on a six-person call” to “how to dodge the Queen of Spades”.
Generala: a dice game like Yahtzee, explained box by box
Five dice, three rolls, eleven boxes to fill. Generala is the game Argentines and Uruguayans grow up playing at the kitchen table, and if you know Yahtzee, you already know about 80% of it. The other 20% is where it gets interesting.
How to play Mafia: rules, roles, setups for 6–16 players and a narrator that runs itself
Mafia is the party game where half the fun is lying with a straight face and the other half is catching someone doing it. Here are the rules without club jargon, the roles, setups for 6 to 16 players, strategy for both sides, and a way to play with no cards and no narrator: roles live on your phones and the story of each night plays on the TV.
How to host a trivia night at work: teams, timing, good questions and a quiz board on the TV
Trivia is the safest act at any office party: finance, engineering and the new hire who started on Monday all feel equally at home. Here is how to run a 40–60 minute trivia night: formats, team sizes, timing, how to write questions, a ready holiday round with answers, scoring and a remote version. The board goes on the TV; everyone answers from their own phone.
How to play charades: rules, secret signals, 50 ideas and playing online
Charades is the party game where you act out a word or title without making a sound while everyone else guesses. Below: rules for a casual circle and for teams, the hand signals that save half your turn, 50 charades ideas from easy to grown-up funny, and how to play on a video call — in Explain It! only the actor sees the word on their phone, and the game keeps time and score.
Friendsgiving games for adults (and the rest of the Thanksgiving table)
The best Friendsgiving games need no box, no printing and no twenty-minute rules speech: one TV, everyone’s phone, and a game that starts before the gravy gets cold. Here are six that work for a table of mixed friends, a few quiet ones for the food coma, and how to bring in family who live three time zones away.
Hanukkah games for adults and families: 8 nights, 8 game ideas
Hanukkah gives you eight evenings in a row with family and friends, and after the second round of latkes, the dreidel only gets you so far. Here are the dreidel rules, a game for each night, party games for adults that run on phones and a TV, and how to play with relatives in another city.
Virtual holiday party games for remote teams: a free 45-minute plan
A virtual holiday party lives or dies in the first five minutes: if people are still fighting with a download link, half the cameras go dark. This plan uses free browser games that everyone plays on their phone while the call keeps running, with a team word game at the center and a bracket final at the end.
The telephone game, drawing edition: rules, prompts and how to play online
Everyone has played telephone: a phrase is whispered down the line and comes out the other end as total nonsense. The drawing version swaps every other whisper for a sketch, and it is a lot funnier. Here are the rules for both, how to run telephone pictionary on paper or online on your phones, 36 tested prompts and a ready party plan.
Free games like Jackbox: turn any TV into a party game screen with phones
The best part of a Jackbox-style night is simple: one big screen everyone laughs at, and a phone in every hand. You can get that format for free in a browser — open playparty.live/tv on the TV, type the room code, and your friends play from their phones. Here is what works, what does not, and how it compares with the paid packs.
Two Truths and a Lie: the rules, 50 examples and how to play it on phones
Two Truths and a Lie is the icebreaker where you share three facts about yourself and everyone else hunts for the made-up one. Below: the rules in 30 seconds, how to run it with friends, at work and on a video call, how to write a lie that actually fools people, and 50 example statements sorted by occasion.
¡Basta! (Name, Place, Animal, Thing): rules, scoring and how to play online
Here is how ¡Basta! works: a letter comes up and everyone races to write a name, a place, an animal and more that start with it; the first to fill every box shouts “Basta!” and the rest have to wrap up. A unique word scores 10, a shared one 5. The online version handles the letter, the timer and the scoring, for two to eight players.
The bluffing trivia party game: how to play and how to fool your friends
A bluffing trivia game is truth-or-lie for the whole group: the screen shows a real but obscure fact with a blank, everyone types a believable fake answer, and then you all hunt for the truth among your friends’ bluffs. You score for spotting the truth and for every person who falls for your lie. You can play it on phones in Bluff Club — 3 to 12 people, free.
The explain-the-word party game: rules, tips and how to play online
The explain-the-word game is simple: one player describes a word without saying it while their team races the clock to guess it; a guessed word scores a point, a skipped one costs you. Plenty of well-known board games work this way, and it is easy to play online: in Explain It! only the explainer sees the word on their phone, and the server keeps the timer and the score. Rules, modes and tips below.
Guess the song from the first notes: hosting a music quiz with friends online
To play a guess-the-song game with friends online, open HitQuiz, pick a playlist and send your friends the room code: a hit plays for one second, then three, seven and fifteen, and everyone answers from their phone. The sooner you name it, the more you score. It works around one TV or over a video call, with the audio playing on every phone.
A karaoke battle without a karaoke machine: rules, formats and gear
You do not need a karaoke machine for a karaoke battle: a TV with a browser and your guests’ phones do the job. The TV shows the karaoke video and highlighted lyrics, guests queue up from their phones, and after every song the room votes with stars — so the leaderboard, not the loudest friend, picks the winner. Here are the rules, five battle formats and the gear worth buying.
Music bingo for corporate events, weddings and bars: running it for 150 guests
To run music bingo at a corporate event, a wedding or a bar, the host needs a big screen, their own phone as the remote and a plan that covers the head count — up to 150 guests. Guests join by QR with no sign-up, audio runs through the DJ’s mixer and your company logo can sit on the screen. Here is what to buy, how to prep the venue and how to build the show.
Music bingo at home or at work: a step-by-step game night plan
Music bingo is bingo where songs replace the numbered balls: a clip plays, you find its number on your ticket, mark it, complete a line and shout BINGO. All you need is a playlist, a TV and your guests’ phones — here is the whole night, from empty room to podium.
Turning your own photo into a nonogram: a step-by-step guide
To make a nonogram from your own photo, open the nonogram editor, tap “From photo” and move the brightness slider until a recognisable silhouette appears on a 10×10 or 15×15 grid. The server checks that the puzzle has exactly one solution, and friends solve it free from a link. The photo is processed on your phone and never uploaded.
“Who is most likely to…”: 20 family-friendly questions and a phone-voting game
“Who is most likely to…” is the game where, for every question, the group votes for one of its own: who is most likely to be late to their own birthday, who would get lost in a mall. Below are 20 kind questions for friends, family and coworkers, the classic rules, and how to play on phones in Party Box, where the server counts the votes and the results show on your TV.
Karaoke with friends at home: how to run a night on any TV
You do not need a karaoke machine or expensive mics to host karaoke at home: a TV with a browser and your guests’ phones are enough. Guests join the queue with their song, the karaoke video and highlighted lyrics play on the big screen, and the room rates every performance with stars.
Office party and team-building games: a plan for the office, a venue or a call
The best office party games are the ones everybody can join in a minute — no accounts, no “I am not good at games”. With a TV in the office or venue, that means music bingo and karaoke; for a remote team, word, picture and bracket games. Below is a ready two-hour plan for both.
What to play at a birthday party: phone and TV games that actually land
The best birthday party games revolve around the guest of honor and need no props: music bingo built from the songs of their youth, karaoke on the TV, drawing and meme games on everyone’s phone. Below is a party plan by stage, plus picks for kids, teens, adults and milestone birthdays.
Holiday party games: a plan for Christmas get-togethers and New Year’s Eve
Holiday party games have to work in a noisy room, with a drink in hand, for guests aged eight to eighty. Music bingo with festive hits, karaoke on the TV, Associations and a good old card game do that best — here is a plan for the evening, from the first guest to the countdown.
Backgammon online with a friend: rules, setup and first strategies
Backgammon is a race for two: each player has 15 checkers, two dice and one goal — bring every checker home and bear them all off first. A lone enemy checker can be hit and sent to the bar, and it must re-enter before anything else moves. Here are the rules step by step, first strategies and how to play a friend online.
Dominoes online: block game rules, locked boards and how not to get stuck with doubles
Dominoes is a game for 2–4 players with 28 tiles from 0-0 to 6-6: you take turns matching a tile to an open end of the line, and the first to empty their hand wins the round. If nobody can move, the board is locked and the lowest pip count takes it. Here are the rules, strategy and how to play online.
Ludo online: race rules, safe squares and tactics that win
Ludo is a race for 2–4 players: each has four tokens that leave home on a six, travel around the board and turn into their own colored lane. A lone rival token can be captured and sent home, while safe squares protect everyone. Here are the rules step by step, tactics and how to play online via a link.
What to play together when you are half a continent apart
Long-distance calls break the same way for everyone: you have four minutes of actual news and an hour you want to spend together. A game fixes that not by being fun, but by giving the conversation something to lean on.
Truco one on one: the deck, the ranking, envido and when to lie
Truco is the rare card game where good cards help but do not decide anything. What decides is how convincingly you pretend. Here is the deck, the ranking, the betting and where the lying lives.
Lotería online: 54 picture cards, a 4×4 tabla and one loud shout
Pictures instead of numbers, beans instead of chips, and a shout at the end. Mexican bingo moves into a browser tab surprisingly well — you just have to bring your own singsong.
When nobody at the party wants to be the host
Every party has that one person who ends up explaining the rules, tracking the score and never actually playing. Good news: a timer can do the job instead.
15 things to play with friends online tonight
Fifteen games you can start in the next minute — no download, no account, no ten-minute rules lecture. Sorted by situation: a crowd, just the two of you, a five-minute gap, a video call.
Crazy eights, Mau-Mau and the whole card-shedding family
One rule — play a card matching the colour or the value on top — grew into a whole family of games, from German Mau-Mau to Dutch Pesten. Here is how it works and where the actual skill hides.
How to keep a video call alive: games that actually work
On a ten-person call, three people talk and the other seven turn into muted grey squares. A game in a second tab fixes that faster than any icebreaker about sharing a fun fact.
How to actually get that chess game with your friend going
Getting a game against a stranger takes five seconds anywhere. Getting a game against Dave, who has been meaning to play since March, is a different problem entirely. Here is how to remove everything standing in the way.
The rules, the scoring, and the paradox in the middle of it
A game where the winner isn't the cleverest player but the one exactly one other person understands. Here are the rules, the scoring, and how to stop writing clues nobody votes for.
What actually fits into three, five and fifteen minutes
A break is rarely as long as the timetable claims. So these games are sorted by minutes rather than genre, and each one honestly fits its shelf.
Send a link, start playing: games with no account and no install
The gap between "let us play something" and the first move should be about thirty seconds. A sign-up form turns that into five minutes, and half the group is back on their feed before the game starts.
Hearts, trick by trick: passing, points and the moon
Hearts is the rare trick game where taking tricks is the problem. One card is worth thirteen penalty points, and the entire table spends the evening trying to hand it to you.
Which board games actually survive a 6-inch screen
Half the board games out there turn into pinch-zoom misery on a phone. The other half play fine one-handed on a crowded train. Here is how to tell them apart.
Battleship for two: how to stop firing at random
Most Battleship games are not lost to bad luck. They are lost in the first twenty shots, fired with no system at all. Rules first, then how to hunt ships faster than the person across from you.
Durak from the first deal to the last trump
Durak takes a minute to explain and years to stop losing at. Here is the podkidnoy version step by step, from the first deal to the endgame after the deck runs dry.
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