Recommendations for co-op online games to play during a Zoom session?

September 26, 2020 5:16 AM

During a team meeting of about 10 people where everyone is working remotely, I have 30 minutes to get everyone to play a video game co-operatively. Could be everyone together, or in smaller breakout rooms. Most important: nothing to install, as little setup time as possible. And it has to be fun!

I see 2 possibilities:

1. A single-player game where one person controls and shares their screen, but multiple participants can compete or collaborate. (Eg. playing a Monkey Island style game together.)

2. A multi-player browser-based game where a unique URL or invite code puts the players in the same game. Preferably something that doesn't require signup.

I'd love to hear your recommendations, especially if you've successfully done something similar!

posted by snarfois to Computers & Internet (15 answers total)

Quiplash is a lot of fun if the group has clever people. It's a deathmarch if your team is boring. We've played it at work a few times (I have it, so I share my screen and everyone joins from a mobile browser, pretty easy) and it has been hit or miss, depending on who is in the group.
posted by phunniemee at 5:25 AM on September 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

JigsawPuzzles.io? A low-to-medium piece-count puzzle should be fast and fun.
posted by humbug at 5:32 AM on September 26, 2020

Our team visits Sporcle for trivia. One person shares a screen while the rest offer answers.

Really clutzy interface and UI, tho we keep coming back.
posted by notyou at 5:35 AM on September 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

You can set up a private room in Skribbl.io - it is a drawing game where each player takes a turn at picking from three words and drawing it, while the others have to guess what it is (like Pictionary, I guess!). One round is probably enough for a quick game with 10 people. This fits into your second option.
posted by AnnaRat at 6:35 AM on September 26, 2020 [5 favorites]

Codenames has an official free browser version and a bunch of unofficial ones that work well over Zoom. It's a good game for team building and lateral thinking, perfect for office fun.
posted by Freyja at 7:36 AM on September 26, 2020 [9 favorites]

Another vote for https://skribbl.io/. My team does game time every week as a sort of social zoom thing and we've had good luck with it in the past.

(Our current obsession is Among Us, but thats definitively not what you're asking for here.)
posted by cgg at 7:47 AM on September 26, 2020

Jackbox games are pretty much exactly what you describe: no setup, everyone in the group visits a website with a temporary login code to play.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:00 AM on September 26, 2020 [3 favorites]

Seconding codenames, have used that for team building before and it's a really good way to see how people think, I have learned a lot about coworkers in a very short time playing that game. (We were playing in person with the board game version, but looking at the online page it appears to be a very good translation to web-based.) Also code names will let everyone play and not just spectate, which is good.
posted by tiamat at 8:30 AM on September 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

I did online codenames with my coworkers and it was great.
posted by Ragged Richard at 8:34 AM on September 26, 2020

If one of you has an Amazon Echo or Google Home speaker, Hey Robot has a website for remote play. They have rulesets for co-op and competitive versions, so you can pick either one.

It's a game that's basically like Taboo, except instead of giving clues to get other people to guess the word without you using it, you are trying to get your smart speaker to guess the word. Results are hilarious, since smart speakers are not the best guessers.
posted by sineala at 9:24 AM on September 26, 2020

Free online Scattergories worked well the one time I played it with a few other people on Zoom.
posted by daisyace at 10:48 AM on September 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

tagpro is a team capture the flag game. You can create a private game with its own link and assign players to the two teams. No sign up required (although you don't get to change your name if you're not signed up). It's generally played 4v4 but you can play with more or less people (or just have two games going)
posted by noloveforned at 11:49 AM on September 26, 2020

Jackbox games and skribble.io are in rotation for my team, though I will note that skribble.io is not friendly to non-native English speakers.
posted by batter_my_heart at 12:44 PM on September 26, 2020

Response by poster: Thanks everyone! I'll check out all these options. It'll be about a month before I try it out – I'll report back here what I ended up doing and how it turned out.
posted by snarfois at 1:43 PM on September 29, 2020

Response by poster: By the way, I can't get skribbl.io to work in any browser.
posted by snarfois at 1:56 PM on September 29, 2020