Five tried-and-tested online games to play with your friends

Singapore moved into Phase 2 (Heightened Alert) on May 16, and this unfortunately means no more social gatherings of more than two people.

Thankfully, we’re already experienced with bringing the party online with multiplayer games. 

Here’s our list of the best of these games for you and your friends to play during this period of new safe distancing measures.

Scattergories is a category game where players rush to fill in answers before the time is up.

You can invite anywhere from two to 45 players to join your game.

Each round has a specific letter that all answers have to start with, and you have to rack your brain to come up with answers that your friends deem acceptable.

The person who has the most popular answers wins the game!

Unfortunately for me, my group of friends has collectively decided that my “A Mop” is not an acceptable answer for “Household Items” starting with “A”.

If you got caught up with the Fall Guys hype last year, you’ll be sure to love Stumble Guys, a similar, more accessible, mobile version of the game.

In this game, you and your friends race through absurd courses and try to make it to the finish line without getting eliminated and make it to the next round.

Your goal is to emerge as the sole victor out of 32 players.

There’s plenty of opportunities to sabotage your friends’ chances of making it to the finish line. Think: bumping them off cliffs, making them the sacrifice to test if a square is safe, and pushing them directly into an obstacle.

Invite friends to your own private “Party” with up to 32 players, or you can join a public party as well!

You can download Stumble Guys for free on the App Store or on Google Play.

Codenames is a word-guessing game that tests just how good your friends are at communicating.

You and your friends will be split into a red and blue team, with one spymaster on each side. The spymaster will have to give out single-word clues and a number to their teammates for them to correctly guess their team’s words.

For example, saying “Flying, two” will hopefully get your blue team members to guess “Parachute” and “Jet”.

But be careful, if your team accidentally clicks on the shaded black square, you immediately lose the game.

You will need at least three other friends for this game.

Be prepared to get incredibly frustrated with your friends, or be pleasantly surprised at how wonderful they are at communicating!

Playing Spyfall lets you know who among your friends is the most convincing liar.

In this game, players are assigned a location and have to guess who the secret “spy” is. The spy will not know what this location is, and has to guess the location without getting found out by the other players.

Each player will take turns answering questions about the location, while trying to spot who stumbles with answering.

This game can accommodate three to 12 players.

But be warned, you’ll be surprised how scarily good some of your friends can be at lying.

Remember playing Connect 4 on the back of some foolscap during school assemblies? Papergames.io lets you relive those primary school memories by offering an online version of these games.

The website lets you create your own tournament with an unlimited number of people. Simply send the unique link to your group chat and see who comes out on top!

You can also challenge other players and join the daily tournament with strangers.

Make sure you get on a video conferencing platform with your friends while playing these games! Their high-pitched screams through your laptop speakers will make it seem like they’re really right next to you.

If you find yourself feeling down during this season, check out our mental well-being resources here.