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”.
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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