QuarantineGames

[Variety of Cells]

I know I'm not the only one whose weekly video calls with their family have started to kind of drag on and become predictable.  We talk about what we've been watching, what's the latest about the virus and the stupid things people have said in relation to it, and that's kind of it.  But the last couple times I've changed it up a bit with some games that we can play.  I'm going list what I've found so far, but I'm also curious if anyone else here has been playing stuff with their families. 

At least for my family, the barrier to entry has to be pretty low, so the games I've found, for the most part, don't require my family to install anything.  For most of them only one person has to install the game, then they share their screen on google hangouts or skype or that other one that sells your information to facebook.  And everyone else plays using their phones by going to a website and typing in a code for the session you started.  Simple enough for my parents to figure out.  Eventually.  So, here's what I've played so far.

Use Your Words - This is what spawned the idea, as my family and I would play this when they came to visit me.  Then the other day I realized it would work well over video chat.  It also carries the essence of riffing.  There are a couple different rounds, one where they play a foreign language clip and everyone writes the subtitles for it, then you all vote on the funniest.  One thing I don't care for is that the game throws in an answer of its own, and if you pick that one then you lose points.  Wish I could turn that option off, but other than that it's fun.  It's available on Steam.

Drawful 2 - Everyone is given their own silly prompt, then using your phone you draw it.  For example, my girlfriend got 'spooky butthole' (you can turn on a family mode option if you like).  Then you all try and guess what each others prompts were and send in your answer.  Then from that list of prompts plus the actual prompt you have to pick with the real one was.  If you vote for someone else's answer, they get points.  If you vote for the real one then the artist gets points.  It's silly and fun and the pictures are terrible for the most part.  Available on Steam.  PS, almost all of us picked the correct prompt for her spooky butthole.  I was very proud of her.

HouseParty - This is one where you all have to download something.  And you have to use your phone to play the games.  There's a pictionary knockoff that is fun, and some trivia games that are fun too, and a knock off of apples to apples.  But all of them have incredibly limited sets of prompts or questions.  The same stuff would come up over and over again, and that was just in one session of play.  Overall I don't really recommend this app. 

Codenames - So I was reading that it's not too hard to play codenames (a card game) over video chat, if you have an additional camera to rig over the table to show the cards.  But then I read another article that pointed to a website where someone had basically recreated codenames in a form that you can invite others to.  For copyright reasons it can't give you instructions, but if you know how to play, or feel like googling the rules, it's a mentally challenging but rewarding game about trying to think of a word that other random words have in common, and hope that your partner gets your assosiations.  Here's the link, it all plays in a browser.  https://www.horsepaste.com/

I also downloaded fibbage, which seems kind of like drawful 2 without the drawing, but I haven't played it yet.  I'll report back when we do next time.

[Iron Curtain]

Use Your Words - This is what spawned the idea, as my family and I would play this when they came to visit me.  Then the other day I realized it would work well over video chat.  It also carries the essence of riffing.  There are a couple different rounds, one where they play a foreign language clip and everyone writes the subtitles for it, then you all vote on the funniest.  One thing I don't care for is that the game throws in an answer of its own, and if you pick that one then you lose points.  Wish I could turn that option off, but other than that it's fun.  It's available on Steam.

I am proud to say that I have kickstarted this game! I am also proud to say that it has surpassed my wildest expectations!

[Johnny Unusual]

This quarantine mostly hasn't changed things: me and friends have already been playing Gloomhaven on table top simulator since one of us lives in another province.  But recently I started hosting a trivia night over Discord.  So that's been fun.

[Variety of Cells]

How’s gloomhaven?  How many people do you need?

My D&D game has moved online, onto a website called roll20. I think I still like being in person better, but it does have some advantages as far as map creation and organization. Being able to track everyone’s HP right on their token has been nice.

And I’ve also been invited to play a Star Wars pen and paper rpg from fantasy flight games. We’ve had three sessions so far and it has been a lot of fun. I like the way the GM runs it. There’s more opportunity for communal story telling, where you can kind or suggest and influence what happens, which is how the rules are written. And instead of an action either succeeding or failing like in D&D, there’s more opportunity for variation. Perhaps you succeeded, but just barely, and something negative also happened with it. And so on.

[Johnny Unusual]

Gloomhaven plays 1-4 plus "dungeon master" but since there's four of us and it wouldn't be as fun, our dungeon master is a player too, just reading as much of his mission as he needs to know.  Note we aren't playing the official video game adaptation but the table top simulator mod.