Phone party games for groups

Phone party games for a group in one room come in three shapes. The difference is where the game lives.

Shared screen, phones as controllers

The game runs on a TV or a laptop the whole room can see. Your phone is the controller: you type answers and vote on it, and the results come up on the big screen. Jackbox Games made this format famous, and it works because everyone laughs at the same answer at the same moment. The catch is the screen. Somebody has to own the game, and somebody has to have a TV nobody else is using. If that's your problem, here are party games that need no TV.

Everything on the phones

Each phone is the screen and the controller at once. One person starts a room, everyone else joins with a code, and the game plays out in your hands. It travels well. A cabin with no TV is fine, and so is a long table at a restaurant. The good ones run in the web browser, so nobody installs anything. The bad ones make every guest download an app first, and you lose two people to the app store before round one.

Pass one phone

One phone goes around the room, and whoever holds it guesses the word on their forehead or reads out a dare. Setup is zero. The cost is that one person plays while everyone else waits, which is fine for ten minutes and less fine for an hour.

Most game nights go wrong in the first five minutes, while someone hunts for the right cable. Before you pick a game, check it against this list.

• Guests shouldn't have to install anything. A QR code or a short room code that opens in the browser is ideal. Every download, account or password is one more chance for someone to say they'll just watch.
• It should work at three and at ten. Plenty of games are tuned for one size and limp at the others. For a small group, see party games for 3 people.
• Rounds should be short. A round should be over before anyone reaches for their messages, and if you miss one, you should be back in for the next.
• Nobody should get knocked out. Elimination is the oldest problem in social deduction games: you're out in round two and spend forty minutes on the couch.
• Everyone needs a job. Quiet people do better with a role than with an open floor, which is the whole idea behind party games for introverts.
• It shouldn't need the TV. A game that needs the big screen also needs the one person who understands the remote.
• Only one person should have to pay, if anyone does.

The Lobbyist is the second kind. Everything happens on the phones, in the browser. It's a social deduction game about arguing: a question comes up with two sides, like whether a hot dog is a sandwich, and everyone picks a side in secret. Then one player, the Lobbyist, is told to argue the side they didn't pick. The table argues, votes on who didn't mean it, and the phones show who was lying.

Setup takes about as long as reading this paragraph. The host opens thelobbyistgame.com, taps Start a game and picks a deck. Everyone else scans the QR code on the host's phone or types the four-letter room code. Nobody installs anything or makes an account.

When the arguing starts, every phone goes flat on the table, screen up, showing the side its owner is arguing. The table becomes the screen. Half of all arguments at real tables are over within 79 seconds, so nobody has time to drift off.

It plays 3 to 10 people. A game is 5 rounds, and the host can add 3 more if the table wants them. Nobody is knocked out, and a new Lobbyist is drawn every round. Fuzzy Logic has 163 questions and is free, and so is the weekly guest deck. The full rules are on how to play.

• You have a big TV, a group that loves writing jokes, and a friend who owns a party pack. Play a shared-screen game. That's what it was made for.
• You have a table, no TV, and everyone is holding a phone anyway. Play a game that lives on the phones, in the browser.
• You're on a road trip. Pass one phone around. Not the driver's.
• There are three of you. Pick a game built for small numbers, because most aren't.
• Some of your friends are loud and some are quiet. Pick a game that gives everyone a role, or the loud ones will run the night.