Best Games To Play With Friends While Social Distancing

Are you bored of your social distance life yet? Maybe you wish the kids had someone to play with or that you could have some adult interaction other than your spouse? Technology can help you with that, and I'm not talking about a virtual friend/girlfriend. Though that is an option if you want, but I'm talking about the various online games you can play with distant friends and family. I'm a huge fan of games be it board games or video games. I wrote about this over Christmas and made a list of my favorite board games to play when friends and family come to visit. But now nobody comes to visit *sad face*. There is a silver lining to this boredom as long as the internet still works.

Many people have new gaming systems which allow you to play video games with people from around the world. I'm not in that group. I have a Nintendo Wii that gets used frequently and I still play games on my old Nintendo 64. Neither of those allow for distance gaming. My kids did find their old Nintendo DS systems and are able to play with cousins on those. But for this list we are going basic and assuming you might only have your phone or a computer and some data to burn. Some of these are great because you may already have the games in your home and just never thought to play them long distance. Otherwise you could pick these up on your next essential trip to the store.

• Smart A** (Donkey) - You could really do this with any trivia game. Someone can read the card and other just guess the answers. To be honest this is what we do a lot of the time anyways. Rather than dedicate to a whole game we just start reading cards.

• Taboo - This is a game where you don't actually need the game to play. You could just have people write down words on a paper and when it is their turn they describe their word without saying the word. When someone gets it right you show it to the screen and the next person goes. You could go gender against gender or household against household.

• Charades - This one was made for social distancing. You get to act like a fool in front of the camera and others try to guess what you are imitating. Kids would love this.

The next few games require a little more tech and maybe a money investment but you could do it now and you are ready to go.

• Jackbox Games - There are a lot of version of this game and the company does bundle deals pretty often so check for those. This is also my favorite online game to play with friends. Gather up all your internet capable devices and have tons of fun. We have our young kids use tablets and our old phones when we play.
• Heads Up - There is a physical card game version of this or an app you can download and play.
• Netflix Party - While this isn't really a game you play it is pretty cool to be able to watch a movie with friends in another house.

You can go through your game closet and see if any of your games would be good for long distance play or if you could modify them a bit to be fun with friends in different houses.

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