If you're anything like me right now, you're currently stuck inside and running out of things to do. Social distancing and quarantines can take a toll on people, especially if you're an extrovert like me. Well look no further, because I have a few games you might enjoy playing with your friends that doesn't involve you leaving your couch/bed. All of these games can easily be played over discord. While Jackbox games do cost money, I've made sure to include a free option for everyone as well. So buckle down, grab your favourite snack and a blanket, and get ready to have some fun with friends from the comfort of your own home!
The more popular option of the two I'm talking about today is the Jackbox Party Pack. Each party pack (there are currently 6 packs and various single games you can purchase as well) comes with 5-6 games, most of which can be played online through someone sharing their screen on discord. Basically the premise is to use your phone to play these games, whether you have to draw something, write a joke, answer a trivia question, or just come up with a silly statement. There's a game for everyone to play, and I'm going to talk about my favourite one from each of the 6 party packs.
Party Pack One: Drawful
I'd love to pick "You Don't Know Jack", but sadly it is a timed trivia game and therefore can be a bit laggy and unfair for the people who aren't playing the game in front of them. Therefore, I choose Drawful. The premise of drawful is to draw the prompt you are given and gave the other players try and guess what your drawing is. Once they see your drawing, they will put in their answers, and everyone will guess what the actual correct answer is. It's a lot of fun, considering the prompts can be really ridiculous and random. There's also a Drawful 2 you can buy separate if you'd rather just play that.
Party Pack Two: Quiplash
Quiplash is a fun game if you are witty (or like to laugh at other people being witty like me). Everyone is given a prompt (Example, a bad name for a pirate) and you have to try and answer as funny as you can. only two people will get the same prompt, and they will be put head to head, with the remainder of the people voting on which one they think is the funniest. It's good for a laugh, and one that my group of friends play a lot of.
Part Pack Three: Trivia Murder Party
I REALLY want to talk about Fakin it (if you are playing with family in your own home, I highly suggest that one) because it is my favourite of all the Jack Box games, but sadly it is not one you can play online (there's a lot of pointing and hand gestures) so instead let's talk about Murder Trivia Party. In this game you have to answer trivia questions (don't worry if you don't actually know the answer, a lot of the trivia is random) while being in the "murder house" and trying to escape. If you answer the question wrong, you play a death mini game where one, or all, of you die. If you die, you can still earn money and in the final round attempt to steal the alive person's body and escape the murder house before they do. It's an easy and fun game, whether you like trivia or not.
Party Pack Four: Monster Seeking Monster
MSM is a fun little game where you are a secret monster looking for a date. At night you text the other monsters to try and get them to go on a date with you. Each monster has a unique power (for example, one could have the power to gain a heart if someone chooses you but you reject them). Hearts equal points and the monster with the most points wins. I've only played this one a couple times, as I don't own this party pack, but it's on my wishlist!
Party Pack Five: Split the Room
This one is actually the one I've played the least, and honestly the only one I've actually played was split the room. It's not my favourite game, but it can be good for a little fun. Basically you're given a hypothetical and ridiculous statement with a blank word missing. You have to fill in the word with something you think the rest of the players would have split opinions on. You get more points the more people are split on their opinions.
Party Pack Six: Push the Button
This party pack is one of my favourites. It has something for everyone and is just a lot of fun. My favourite game of the 5 is Push the Button. You are a crew on a spaceship and have discovered that there are aliens on board. Your job is to find out who the aliens are and eject them from the ship. You only have a limited time (and although 15 minutes seems like a lot, it goes by so fast!). There are different tasks that the crew can perform (3 people at a time) to determine who the aliens are. The aliens will be given a different prompt than the crew (one that's similar but different). The trick is, the aliens can hack people to either give them the alien prompt instead, or they can hack their fellow alien to give them the human prompt. It gets really stressful by the end when time is running out. It's a lot of fun and I definitely recommend this one!
Hope you get a chance to play some of these games, they are all a lot of fun to play with friends and family and definitely help with the lack of social interaction.
Netgames.io is relatively unknown and more people should definitely play it! It's an online version of a few relatively known board games. A lot of them focus on deceit and having secret roles, which is one of my favourite game types. These games can be played from your computer or even on mobile! You will have to use discord or another voice chat to play though, as you will need to talk to each other.
The games available to play are One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Codenames, Secret Hitler, Spyfall, Love Letter and Avalon. The ones I will be talking more about today are Secret Hitler, Werewolf and Codenames, but I definitely recommend checking out the other ones on the list as well.
One Night Ultimate Werewolf:
If you have ever played Town of Salem, it's kinda like that except less roles and it's only one night. The best part is you can easily customize your game mode to include roles or remove them based on what kind of game you want to play. Everyone is given a role and the main goal is to vote for one of the werewolves at the end of the night. As long as you vote out one of the two, the town will win. If majority votes for a town member, the werewolves will win. Each role does something different at night (for example the seer will see someones role, the troublemaker will swap two players cards, meaning they might have a different role the next day, and the robber will steal someones role. During the day you will have a limited time to talk about what your role is and what you did/see. Werewolves want to lie! They don't want to be caught. Pretend your just a lonely villager or perhaps an insomniac. This is where the chaos comes in, because if you were a werewolf at night, the troublemaker could have switched our cards and guess what! You're no longer a werewolf, but do you believe they really switched your cards? It's a lot of fun and I have spent hours playing this game.
Codenames:
Codenames is the only one on the list that doesn't involve deceit, which is why I'm including it. You need at least 4 people to play, as you will be two teams of two or more. You will have a bunch of words in front of you. The object of the game is to get the team mate you assign as the hint giver to get you to correctly guess the words you need to, before the other team does the same. You as the hint giver can only give one word clues, followed by the number of cards that match that clue., for example, colour 2 (the cards are red and yellow).You want to be careful with your clue giving though, for you could uncover one of the other teams words by accident, or even uncover the bad word, which instantly kills your team thus ending the game and the other team winning. It's an easy and fun game that anyone can play.
Secret Hitler:
This game ruins friendships, and it is so fun haha. It's a game of Fascists (red bad guys) versus Liberals (blue good guys). The liberals want to pass the movement while the fascists want to fail it. Each round there is a new President and Chancellor. The president will pick the chancellor. Everyone votes on whether they think this is a good choice or not. If the vote passes, the president will draw three cards from the top of the deck. The ideal hand is to give the chancellor a red and a blue so you can test them with which one they will pick, but be warned because they can lie and say you gave them 2 reds instead! If you are a bad guy, you want to try and give them 2 reds and claim the cards you drew were 3 reds. It's a big mess of a game where you have no idea who to trust. It gets even messier when you have failed 3 times (played 3 fascist cards), you move into Hitler territory. This means that if you successfully vote Hitler (one of the fascist members) in as chancellor, then they automatically win the game. It sounds like a lot and can be a bit overwhelming at first, but honestly it's one of my favourite games and I just love playing it. It's kinda fun to yell at your friends for not listening to you haha. You should definitely check it out