Everyone loves a games night, and with the current lockdowns and restrictions then this is the perfect opportunity to be creative and host your own virtual games night with your friends and family. Just because this will be online rather than a games night in person doesn’t mean that it has to be any less fun. We have put together some great ideas to ensure that you host a fun evening that your friends and family will love.
Not only is a virtual games night a great way to keep connected with your friends and family during lockdown, but it is a great way to have a few laughs, keep your spirits up and the best part is that it’s also free! There are plenty of apps and different types of software out there that you can use to host your evening and each of them has their own benefits. When choosing which platform to use, it’s important to think about who will be invited to your evening and what would be the easiest one for everyone to use.
Zoom: This has fast become one of the most popular video chatting apps software for people for both business and social use. It allows up to 100 people to chat together for up to 40 minutes at a time, so if you are planning a longer games evening than this, then you may have to set up a couple of meeting links for your guests.
Skype: This may be a great option if you are inviting older members of your family to join your games night, as a lot of the older generation already know how to use this software. It allows up to 50 people to join and is free to use.
Facetime: This allows up to 32 people to join a video call at once and works on iphone, ipads and macs.
Create your Guest List
Once you have decided what platform you are going to use to host your evening, the next thing to think about is who you are going to invite to join you. If you have a lot of family and friends you’d like to invite, it might be a good idea to maybe do one evening for your friends, and another evening for your family. That way, if you have slightly older family members, you can tailor the games to suit them, and again, with your friends, you can play games that are more appropriate to be played amongst friends.
Once you have decided who to invite, you will need to send out e-invitations with details of the date and time of your event. You will also want to include what software you are using to host it, and also send them the link that they will need to use to join the event.
You could send suggestions for snacks or drinks for everyone to buy ready for the evening, so that you can all make the same cocktails for example whilst you play your games and it’s also a fun way to feel connected to your friends and family.
Create a Games List
There are loads of games that you can choose to play for your virtual games night so it’s worth thinking about this before your evening so you can plan anything that you may need to do or prep beforehand. Here are a few of our favourite games that you might like to play:
20 Questions: This is a fun way to get to know your family and friends better and there are bound to be things that you will learn about them that you didn’t know before. Be creative with your questions and think outside of the box to make it more fun.
Bingo: This is a traditional family game that everyone knows how to play, so there shouldn’t be much explanation needed here. You could use an online website to play with a virtual caller or pick one person to be the caller within your group.
Most likely to: This is a fun drinking game to play with your friends and will let you get to know them better. You could take it in turns to ask the question and get everyone to answer who they think it would be, for example, ‘most likely to go bungee jumping’, and the person who everyone agrees it is has to take a shot.
Pictionary: This is a fun game to play and would definitely be a fun one to play online, just make sure that the person drawing has their screen close to the paper! Divide everyone into two groups and take it in turns to drawer the word for the other team.
Charades: This is another game that most people know how to play and one that works well online. Divide your friends into two groups and use a charades ideas generator to choose either a word or phrase to act out. If you are using Zoom then the person who is acting out the word can use their ‘spotlight’ feature, and their team has one minute to guess the word.
VR Games
If you want to go all out on a virtual games night there are plenty of VR games that you can play online using a headset to give you a truly immersive experience. This would mean that everyone you are playing with would also need to have the same software, so this is probably one for real gamers and would probably work best for a smaller group of friends.
