15 things to play with friends online tonight

How to pick one in thirty seconds

"What should we play" is rarely a problem of not knowing enough games. It comes down to three things: how many of you there are, how long you have, and whether anyone is willing to read rules out loud. Above five players, pick something with simultaneous turns — otherwise four people watch the fifth think. Ten minutes free? A quick duel. Group already fading? Drawing or memes, nothing to memorize.

Everything below runs in a browser tab on a laptop and on a phone. One person opens a room, drops the link in the group chat, everyone else joins with a four-character code. More on that in the piece about link-based games with no sign-up.

Big group: 5 to 10 people

The enemy of a big group is the queue. Any game where turns go around the circle becomes eight people waiting for their moment. So this list is all simultaneous writing, drawing and voting.

1. Meme Party — Cards Against Humanity energy, except the answers are memes. A judge reads the situation, everyone throws in an image, and the judge picks the winner; the next round someone else judges. 3–10 players, 20–30 minutes a game. Start here: Meme Party.
2. Pictioner — Pictionary in a browser: one person draws with a mouse or a finger, everyone else shouts guesses into chat. 3–8 players, 15 minutes, artistic quality not guaranteed.
3. Basta! — a letter comes up, everyone fills five categories (city, animal, food and so on). First one done hits the button and freezes the rest. Seventy-five seconds a round, 2–8 players. It's the Latin American cousin of Scattergories and it plays fast.
4. Associations — the Dixit format: the storyteller gives a clue for their picture, everyone else submits a lookalike, then you vote. 3–6 players, about 20 minutes.
5. OCHO! — crazy eights with teeth: +2, +4, color changes and a mandatory shout of "OCHO!" when you are down to your second-to-last card. Up to 8 players, 8–12 minutes.
6. Lotería — Mexican picture bingo. A 4×4 tabla, a caller announcing cards, beans on the squares. One minute to explain, and someone who joins halfway loses nothing.

Two players: duels that hold up

For two, depth beats speed. Classics win here, because game two is better than game one — by then you know how the other person bluffs.

1. Chess — full rules, castling, en passant. Ten minutes or the whole evening, entirely up to you two.
2. Sudoku Duel — one grid, two people, points for correctly filled cells. Quiet, fast and unexpectedly vicious.
3. Battleship — a 10×10 board with the fleet placed for you, so you open fire straight away. Fifteen minutes, plus a lasting mystery about how they found your carrier again.
4. Truco — the Argentine bluffing duel: truco, retruco, envido, and a friend lying to your face with total conviction. If it is new to you, Truco is easier to pick up than it looks.
5. Backgammon — the short game, dice, and the eternal argument about luck. 10–20 minutes.

Five minutes: elevator, build, queue

A separate category: games you can abandon without guilt. No progress bar, no save file, start and stop.

1. Tic-Tac-Toe — a first-to-five series, roughly five minutes. Perfect for settling a work argument.
2. Checkers — captures are mandatory, so it moves faster than chess and still makes you think.
3. Dominoes — block dominoes for 2–4, about ten minutes a round.

A long evening, and something stranger

For nights when everyone has cleared their schedule and nobody wants another card game.

1. AI Dungeon Master — a text adventure where an AI runs the story and you type what you do. It can go high fantasy or it can become a noir investigation into a missing office fridge. An hour and a half and a lot of screenshots.
2. AI Voice Party — voice challenges: sing it, act it, sell a useless object in ten seconds. An AI judges the performances, and at least two people take it personally.
3. AI Game Factory — describe a game in one sentence, the AI builds a playable mini-game, you play it. Results vary wildly, which is the point.

That is fifteen, and it leaves out Durak (the Russian attack-and-defend card game, 2–6 players), Hearts with its shoot-the-moon gamble, and Ludo, where you get knocked out one square from home. Plus Tournament: a 3–8 player bracket layered on top of the duel games, with byes and a final standings table. That one ends later than planned.

When you are short a player

Six people promised, three showed up. Add bots — they fill the room to a playable size and play sensibly instead of throwing the game. When a real person finally turns up, the host drops a bot from the lobby with one tap and the seat is free — between games, though, not in the middle of a hand.

One last thing: if you are playing alongside a video call, do not share your screen. Everyone should have their own tab. We wrote up how to run that properly in the guide to games for video calls.