Party games you can play with just your phones
Every person in the room brought a small computer with a screen. That is a games night waiting to happen, and it needs no board, no printing and no trip to a shop. Here is how to get one going in about two minutes.
Start with the room, not the game
The first question is not which game to play. It is what the room actually looks like. Six people around a kitchen table is a different evening from eleven people spread across two sofas, and a game that is perfect for one is hard work in the other. Before you pick anything, answer three things: how many people are playing, whether there is a screen everybody can see, and whether anybody in the room is going to be asked to install something.
That last question is the one that quietly kills most phone based games nights. If four people have to find an app, make an account and confirm an email address before anybody plays anything, the evening is over before it starts. Somebody will be on a bad connection, somebody will not remember their password, and the person who suggested it will spend twenty minutes as technical support. Any game that asks that of guests is the wrong game, however good it is once it is running.
The version that works is the one where the host is the only person who has to have anything. Everybody else opens a link, types a short code, picks a name and is in. That is the shape to look for.
The three ways a phone game can work
There are only three arrangements, and knowing which one you are in makes the choice much easier.
- One phone, passed around. Nobody needs anything except the person who started it. It works with no signal at all, it works in a car, and it works when half the room has a flat battery. The trade is that only one person can act at a time.
- Everybody on their own phone. The room shares a code and everyone plays at once. This is the arrangement that scales, and it is the one that lets somebody three hundred miles away join the same game as the people on the sofa.
- A shared screen with phones as controllers. The telly or a laptop shows the game to the room and each phone shows only what that player is allowed to see. This is the best of the three when you have a screen, because the game is a thing the room looks at together rather than nine people staring down.
Games that need nothing but people
If you are on one phone with no signal, you want a format where the phone is a prop rather than a network. Charades is the obvious one and it is better on a phone than it ever was on scraps of paper, because nobody has to write the words, nobody can see them in advance, and the clock keeps itself. Humming games work the same way: the phone shows one person the song, and the room does the rest.
These are also the games that survive a room with a wide range of ages in it, because the skill being tested is not reading speed or typing speed. A child who cannot spell can still act out a word, and a grandparent who has never used the app can still shout an answer.
Games for everybody on their own phone
Once each person has their own screen, the interesting thing is not that everybody can act at once. It is that everybody can act in private. That unlocks a whole class of game which is impossible around a table: a game where each person is told something different and nobody can see anybody else’s screen.
Bluffing games live here. A question goes out, everybody writes an answer that is not true, and the real answer is mixed in with the invented ones. Deduction games live here too, where the room is given a location and one person is not, and the whole game is a conversation where one person is guessing. Drawing chains live here, because the drawing has to be hidden until the reveal or there is no reveal.
The rule of thumb for this arrangement is that the game should give you a reason to look up. If the whole round happens on your own screen and the room is silent, something has gone wrong with the choice rather than with the people.
- Bluff OffWrite a lie good enough to fool the room, then find the truth.
- ImposterEverybody knows where they are, except one person who is guessing.
- Sketch ChainDraw it, guess it, pass it on, and read the whole chain back.
Games for a room with a telly in it
A shared screen changes the feel of the evening more than any other single thing. The game stops being something each person is doing on their own and becomes something the room is watching together, which is why quizzes and word games are so much better this way.
Quizzes are the obvious use, and a shared screen is what makes a home quiz feel like a proper one: the question is up where everybody can read it, the timer is visible, and the scoreboard moving between rounds is half the entertainment. Word association games need it even more, because the whole point is that two teams are looking at the same grid and reading it differently.
You do not need a smart television or a cable. Anything with a browser will do, including a laptop propped on a shelf. What matters is that everybody can see it from where they are sitting.
- Quiz RushFast questions on the big screen, answers on every phone.
- Team WordsTwo teams, one grid of words, and one clue at a time.
The practical bits nobody mentions
Four small things decide whether the evening runs smoothly, and none of them are about which game you chose.
- Say the code out loud rather than sending it. A four letter code read across a room is faster than a message that half the group will not see for ten minutes.
- Check the wifi before you start rather than during the first round. A guest network that needs a password on a printed card is a five minute delay at exactly the wrong moment.
- Put a charger somewhere in the middle. An hour of screen on time will find the phone with fourteen per cent battery.
- Agree the finish before you begin. Three rounds, or half an hour, or until somebody has to leave. A games night that ends because it fizzled out is remembered differently from one that ended because it was over.
What this costs
It should cost nothing, and in Koven it does. Every game format is free on the free tier, guests never install anything and never make an account, and rooms hold up to eight people without anybody paying. If you are hosting something bigger, or you want the game on the telly with phones as controllers, that is the part a subscription covers, and only the person hosting needs it.
- What Koven costsThe free tier, what a subscription adds, and why only the host needs one.
- All fifteen gamesHow each one plays, how many people it needs and how long it runs.