Gaming in the Time of Coronavirus

March 14, 2020 3:30 PM

I'm looking for casual, easy-to-pick-up games that support online multiplayer, as well as social interaction (text or voice chat). Something with low commitment and barrier-to-entry – so I can post a link on Facebook, and people can easily join. Ideally, it wouldn't require players to install anything, and it'd be something that people can pop in and out of at will. Board-gamey things and video-gamey things are both fair game. Likewise, I'm cool with competitive, cooperative, and/or sandboxy. Whatcha got?
posted by escape from the potato planet to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (4 answers total)

There's a genre of games called ".io games" that are generally: free, browser based, multiplayer, involve moving small colorful things around a 2D board in real time, simple enough to figure out the basics in minutes, and hosted at an ".io" domain. Here is one list. Usually there's no included text or voice chat, which I think is a plus since you're playing with a lot of random people and no visible moderators, but you can set up a separate Discord or something.
posted by bright flowers at 3:42 PM on March 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

My teenager is having a lot of fun playing the online version of Uno. It cost $3 and he's able to play with strangers, with bots, and/or with his friends.
posted by BlahLaLa at 5:12 PM on March 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

Jackbox games are party games you can play with people remotely. Only one person needs to buy the game - everyone else just joins you on a group Skype or call and gets a code to login to the game on their phones.
posted by Geameade at 9:11 PM on March 14, 2020

+1 to Jackbox games. My partner and I just hosted a game night across three states using video chat and it worked incredibly well. They’re good party-style games, not much in the way of rules to learn, fast to play and very funny.
posted by a device for making your enemy change his mind at 11:35 PM on March 14, 2020