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Face it, if the virus doesn’t get you, boredom will.
COVID restrictions have enforced lifestyle changes that may never revert. Despite the WFH perks, we do get to go out less and the post-work drink-outs or house parties are off-limits.
You can still get the flavor of hanging out with your friends or colleagues though. The brightest tech minds out there are churning some quite useful ideas to help you get some semblance of fun and frolic back.
We won’t be surprised if HR has tried and tested a few team-building exercises already.
But the best virtual online games can be a lot more fun if you have the right games and probably minus the organizational framework.
Check them out!
15 Best Online Virtual Games to Play Today!
15. QuizUp
Trivia games may not be your first choice if it’s about hanging out with your drinking buddies. With the right company, however, it can really get things going.
QuizUp does not hold back when it self-proclaims as the biggest trivia game in the world. It does live up to expectations quite effortlessly.
Available as a virtual online game on Android and iOS devices, QuizUp does have a huge range of trivia topics to choose from.
Login with your Facebook or Google+ account, just as your friends, choose a topic, and get started.
Check out how far each participant has made on a given trivia topic. If you’re the lead, promote some healthy competition and rewards for achieving high scores.
QuizUp can be great to set the mood and break the ice. Just make sure you always have proper network connectivity!
14. Tabletop Simulator
Board games are fun but not enough. Make your board game and have your friends tag along!
Tabletop Simulator is not a game at all. Instead, it’s kind of a platform where you can build a board game from scratch, albeit with some limitations. You don’t need programming or coding skills. The app is a set of toolkits that will help you build classic games or perhaps something new.
You will get the more common games like chess, backgammon, dominoes, checkers, and the likes available by default.
But if you want a bit more than common board games, you will need to buy DLCs.
Games like Red Dragon Inn and Venture Forth will not be readily available and will cost $5 upwards per game. You can tinker around a bit and essentially manufacture your versions of board games although mind you, there are some limitations to what you can do.
Either way, Tabletop Simulator can easily double up as a virtual board game playground for the lot at work or outside it.
13. 8 Ball Pool
Once a classic always a classic.
8 Ball Pool, the original version popularized on Miniclip and other gaming websites, still is one of the most popular virtual games to play with friends.
The basic game has gone through a number of changes over the years. Yet, it hasn’t gone overboard at all and retains its charm with simple gameplay mechanics.
Challenge your friends one by one or create a mock tournament.
We only wish you could create private lobbies and tournaments right in the game and host it. So, just set up a tourney, play across friends, and make the best of closed pubs.
It’s available on both Android and iOS devices or you can play it via your web browser as well.
12. Random Trivia Generator
Another trivia game on this list, Random Trivia Generator is a free-to-play trivia game and it is rated as one of the most fun games to play online on Android or your web browser.
Random Trivia Generator scores big by keeping this simple, random, other than the immense catalog of questionnaires.
Players get to choose between 6 categories – entertainment, arts, general, geography, history, and science.
Each category will open up among the largest question banks on any trivia games.
There’s days of content available, so expect to keep at it for some time before moving onto QuizUp or some other trivia games we’ve reviewed just below.
11. Psych! Outwit Your Friends
Trivia games are fun but there’s little to just getting the right answer. With Psych! things get a whole lot better though!
Psych! Outwit Your Friends takes the general idea of a trivia game. It’s about the same, with different categories and an army of questions under each. But you don’t just choose a category to start answering.
You can choose a category for your friends and add a bluff answer to each trivia question!
In Psych, you earn points by answering correctly, or if your friends end up choosing your blabber as the answer.
And you can just about leave anything behind and enjoy letting all hell loose. Someone’s surely coming out red-faced and you can have a virtual rendition of Ellen DeGeneres making sure of it too!
This is among the best online virtual games in 2022 – we loved it! You can play this on your Android or iOS devices.
10. Snap Games
If you use Snapchat, you must be one of the 100 million+ users playing Snap games every day.
Snap Games was launched in 2019 and became an instant hit, one of the earliest introductions of small-scale interactive gaming into social media.
Games like Bitmoji Party, Bitmoji Paint from Snapchat’s very own Snap Games Studio, Bumped Out by Zynga, Ready Set Gold by PikPok, are generating some serious fun and monetization as well.
Users get to create their personal emojis or Bitmojis and engage in fun virtual activities with other users from across the globe.
In Bitmoji Paint, users can collaborate to have at it on empty canvases. Bitmoji Party takes it further by including numerous mini-games for users to interact across.
We won’t necessarily ask you to take your whole gang over to Snapchat just to enjoy the games. That said though, these are the best games to play with friends online today, worth taking it all to Snapchat!
09. Cards Against Humanity
There are games that can get the party started and then there are games like Cards Against Humanity to keep it going.
Strictly not for just-teens, Cards Against Humanity is to be taken lightly. There are 100 black cards with statements left incomplete and 400 white cards to do just that. The genius of this game is the black-white combinations, meant to tickle the funny bone.
Cards Against Humanity demands players to be precocious about it. The cards combined will lead to statements that can pick the wrong strings and easily hurt sentiments unless it’s a well-knit crew.
The game can get a bit boring if you’re used to it and we do recommend getting new card packs released often.
Recommended for individuals over 17, this can easily be one of the best games to play on Zoom to keep the pegs running.
Worth mentioning, this game is currently unavailable to play online but it will surely be again. Watch this space!
08. UNO!
We still forget to say UNO!
Undoubtedly one of the most popular card games ever, UNO (and Monopoly) changed family time forever. For some of us, UNO! was the quintessential family bonding time, easy enough for children and smart enough for adults.
Now you can play UNO! online, brought to you by Mattel just as before. It’s the same card game and among the more popular online party games since its release in 2020.
There’s a lot of monetization going on in the background unless you get VIP though. In case you’ve played UNO! before, you might feel some game scenarios rigged for the loss.
But we love it for what it is!
07. Pictionary
The most fun games to play online are the simplest ones around and there are few better at this than Pictionary.
You can start off with a basic group of individuals and with a random Pictionary word generator. Just as with Charade (where you help your team guess the target word without saying a word!), Pictionary is about expressing your drawing skills or vice versa!
What makes Pictionary easily one of the best online virtual games around is its scope.
This game fits in perfectly with a group of kids, a virtual corporate lunch break, and an easy evening with friends.
Pictionary can help you look at things in a different view, even people you may have known for years.
06. Scattergories
Board games that test your vocab are commonplace, but we are not talking about playing Scrabble with your peeps.
Scattergories takes the basics from our age-old name-place-animal-thing and takes it to a whole new level.
You get 20-sided dice that will determine the letters on which players have to name stuff according to a category chosen before rolling the dice.
There’s a timer as well, meant to amp up the overall excitement.
Scattergories is one of the best party games to play on Zoom and a popular one at that too. It is best played with a group of 10 given that there are 10 categories and 20 possible letters for each category.
For HRs trying to eke out some worthwhile team-building exercises, this might be the first choice!
05. Monopoly
Is Monopoly the best board game there is? Quite sure more people will agree than not.
Dating all the way back to the early 1900s, Monopoly is a classic board game standing the test of time. A slew of changes, variations, expansions later, Monopoly stands today as a pastime while demanding some serious brainwork as well.
The game is generally played with lax rules, often customized to suit children (or just to make it easier.)
We would instead urge you to play Monopoly the right way with your peeps, the hard way, with the taxes, increasing property rent, and the ultimate chance to go bankrupt.
Play as per the game rules, Monopoly can be one of the best online virtual games to play with friends without taking too long to spoil the party, and perhaps some accompaniments.
You can buy Monopoly for Android or iOS. Or you can get Monopoly for PC or consoles from Ubisoft.
In case you want to play Monopoly for free, play Rento, quite similar but different enough still to be around!
04. Werewolf Online
There’s nothing better than catching someone else’s lies or lifting their poker face veil – this is what Werewolf Online is all about.
Bring your friends in to play with the werewolves or the villagers and hunt down the construer in hiding. Werewolf online’s immense popularity draws a lot from the inevitability of getting the psychological upper hand over the other player.
You play as either a werewolf or as a villager just as all other users in one game. Each player is assigned specific powers or capabilities. But the onus is on you to find out who on your team is a werewolf and the same can happen if you’re on the villagers’ team.
The game revolves around interaction including a specific set of questions asked between the players. Fight as a team and convince your fellow players to collaborate and find out the other player’s roles to win.
Be careful as your comrade might actually be from the opposite team!
Werewolves Online is among the best games to play over Zoom or any other communication medium for a fun virtual game night. We love it and we’re sure so will you and your best buds!
03. Jackbox Games
If you’re looking for the best online virtual games to play with friends for some time now, you must have come across Jackbox games already.
More than one game, Jackbox was arguably the first player in this scene, offering simple and fun online games for parties and group meets.
You Don’t Know Jack?
Well, you should as that’s where Jackbox games started from, now offering quite a few fun virtual games to play with friends.
Gather your gang, preferably get a Jackbox party pack of games, and play on with a compatible mobile device – just an Android or iOS smartphone or tablet will do.
Jackbox games make it simple with some fun and exciting games, perfect for a virtual party evening.
02. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Another title that has made it big as an easy and fun virtual game to play with friends, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has it all to keep a group of buddies on it for hours and days and more.
Kawaii animation (all that’s cute in the anime world courtesy of Japan) may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Neither is the idea of plugging holes in a village amid agreeably nice-looking anthropomorphic NPCs, e.g., a pretty smiling Pokémon-ish dog’s head with the body of Sims.
But Animal Crossing has scored high as a happy interactive game, peaceful even, something that few other games have even come close to delivering.
So, go ahead, build your house, deck it up, and pay off the house loan – there’s a lot to do. Everything happens in real-time, although you can time travel on Animal Crossing to have things done.
All in all, this is the one game that can keep you on for months. You can even play it on PC!
01. Among Us
Among Us is also from InnerSloth just as Werewolf and it’s another brilliant virtual online game worth spending hours on with your friends.
Taking the gaming world by storm, Among Us is your average semi-indie casual game with signature artwork and mostly full of various minigames from mazes to matching wires, all played on a spaceship.
But that’s not where the fun’s at.
Thing is, each game will include a number of players working together as a crew, and a few impostors within the crew. The impostors can kill other players and win the game if they are just as many in number as the remaining crew.
And the game’s afoot!
You can give it your best on the mini-games and then get killed by an impostor. Or you can be one and kill the others. All of this happens as players communicate over the in-game channel or on Among Us Discord servers.
Among Us had 120 million active players in 2021 and it truly is one of the best online virtual games you can play today.
Wrapping It Up
Despite lockdown restrictions, make sure you keep at it. The world is yet to come to terms with the psychological impact of being socially constrained and you must party even though a night out may not be happening. These fun virtual games can keep you connected with your crew, your family, or your colleagues.
Do your bit to encourage group activities as often as possible.
