Remote Game Night 2 - Games to Play Over Zoom

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today's video, I'll share the 2nd part of my favorite games to play remotely with friends and family.  In this video, I'll talk about games you can play over Zoom.

In the last video, I covered 2 popular game platforms -- Jackbox and the HouseParty app games.  In this video, I'll share some of the games you can play remotely over Zoom -- the video conferencing app.  I'm going to go from my favorite to least favorite games.  First,

Codenames

Codenames is a really fun board game where you split everyone up into 2 teams -- red and blue.  You need at least 4 people to play.  The game board looks like this and each card is a spy code name.  Each team elects a spymaster who has access to a card that shows which of these cards are red spies, which are blue, which are casual bystanders, and which is the assassin.  Essentially, spymasters give the rest of their team one-word hints, that could indicate more than one card, so that they can guess which codenames are their own spies.  The first team who guesses all of their team’s spies wins.  If you guess one and it's a spy for the other team, well you just scored for them.  Bystanders don't help or hurt you, but if you guess the assassin, it's game over, you lose.  That a super brief overview of the game, but the good news is that there is a free online version, so that you can play over Zoom.

Set up a Zoom call for everyone to join and assign people to red and blue teams, choosing a spymaster for each team.  Go to https://www.horsepaste.com and start a new game.  Don't worry about stopping this video to write down the URL, I'll have it in the description section below -- or you can go to my website that has all of my video scripts: www.marblejar.net.  Once you start a new game, you'll need to text this link up here to the 2 spymasters.  Explain to them how to view the spymaster card (by clicking on Spymaster down here).  No one else needs the link since you are going to share your screen with everyone on Zoom by clicking on Share Screen down here.  Okay -- now as the teams guess (and you can participate as well) you as the host will need to click on the cards to "turn them over" and show whether they are red spies, blue spies, bystanders, or the assassin.  It's great fun and allows for lots of interaction and good-natured ribbing.  Next,

Psych!

Okay -- so this is already a game you play over an app, so everyone needs to have downloaded the Psych! app on their phones before getting on the Zoom that you have set up.  As the host, you open the app on your phone and start a game, choosing one of the packs they include for free.  You can get additional packs for about $1 a piece.  Once you hit play, you can ask others to join your game by hitting Join a Game and entering the secret code -- once everyone has joined, hit Start Game.  The point of this game is to make up believable answers to real trivia questions.  Everyone chooses which answer they think is correct and if someone chooses your fake answer, you get points.  It all happens on the app, but when you all join a Zoom together you can interact and chat as you playing, just like you were sitting in a living room together.  The next game is

Scattergories

Okay -- for this game everyone is going to need a piece of paper and something to write with.  Have everyone join a Zoom call.  You can play as individuals, but it might be more fun to play in small teams.   For teams, since you need for them to work together privately, you can have teams with  everyone in a single location (like a family) or you can put your Zoom on mute and have teams conference call with each other.  As the host, you'll go to https://swellgarfo.com/scattergories/ (again this will be in the description) and then share your screen with everyone on the Zoom.  The goal of this game is to come up with unique words that start with the letter shown here that fit into each of the 12 categories.  As soon as you uncover the categories, the teams or individuals will try to come up with unique words that fit the category since each unique answer gets awarded one point.  If you have the same answer as someone else, you don't get a point.   Everyone will have to go by the honor system when checking their answers.  Next game is

Charades

Start a Zoom for everyone to join.  Then, send out a link to http://www.getcharadesideas.com.  This website just pumps out prompts for charades.  Hit "Give Me Another" for the next prompt.  Each person gets a certain amount of time -- say 3 minutes to act out as many prompts as possible getting points for each one people guess correctly.  You can do several rounds of this switching off who is doing the acting.  The actor with the highest number of points wins.

Trivia

I haven't done this successfully, but you can do this one of two ways.  If you just want to throw out some random trivia questions to your friends on Zoom, go to https://www.randomtriviagenerator.com to generate some questions.  If you want to make the trivia quiz more formalized with a leader board and a winner, you can generate a quiz on www.myquiz.org.  Everyone will need to sign up for an account on this website in advance, but you can generate a quiz with pre-made questions or you can do your own quiz with your own custom questions.  In addition, you can play the game 2 truths and a lie by having everyone submit 2 true things and 1 false thing about themselves in advance and put that into a custom quiz for everyone to answer.  And finally,

Pictionary

If you've seen the first part of this series, you'll know that I think the best way to play Pictionary is on HouseParty, but if you don't want to sign up for that app, there are ways to play it over Zoom.  Start a Zoom meeting for everyone to join.  You as the host should go to Sketchful.io and Choose Custom Game.  Copy the URL down here and text it to everyone to invite them to join your game.  Your friends will need to bring this link up on a device like their phone that has a touchscreen for drawing.  When everyone has joined, push Start to begin the game.  The game will tell you who is drawing and allow them to pick a prompt.  The biggest problem with this format is that in order to advance to the next prompt, someone has to actually type in the answer into the comments since it is designed to play without sounds.  So, my suggestion is in order to make it more interactive, go ahead and let people shout out the answers, but when they get it right, have that person type the correct answer into the comments so that they get credit.  As I said, it's not perfect, but you can make it work. 

And that's it.  Let me know what you think.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!