7 Fun Things To Do With Friends… Virtually | Games, Pub Quizzes, Book Clubs, And More
Instead of hanging out with friends this weekend… we’re all going to have to find a way to hang in.
Luckily, we live in a miraculous age of technology, and where there’s a will, there’s a way. Had karaoke plans? Fancied doing a pub quiz? Keep them in the diary – here are the best ways to hang out with your friends and family without leaving your house.
Play Party Games
If you haven’t heard of Jackbox Games, this is one you’re going to want to make a mental note for later, anyway. It’s basically a set of party games you can play on your TV using your phones. They include Drawful, a take on Pictionary that involves drawing inevitably terrible pictures of surreal scenarios; Quiplash, a cross between Blankety-Blank and Cards Against Humanity; and Fibbage, in which you try to bluff your way through bizarre trivia (or just scoop the prize for the funniest answers). Usually, you all have to be in the same physical room to play, but the founders have just created a blog post that’s filled with hacks to tune everyone in from far-flung locations. FIND OUT MORE
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Netflix and Chill
Yes, technically you could have made this work before. But it’s just become that much easier with this new Chrome browser extension, Netflix Party. It allows you to synchronise playback across multiple devices (so nobody gets to the twist earlier than everyone else) and hosts a group messaging board on the side of your screen, so you can all respond in real time. READ MORE
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Host A Virtual Games Night
Tabletopia is essentially an online Draughts café – a huge library of board games that you can play with friends remotely. It’s free to sign up and has over 800 games on offer, from chess to escape room card games. There’s a fair few you probably won’t have come across before, like Hats, a game that involves “millions of hats”; Wingspan, a fiercely competitive game about ornithologists; and Chai, a battle to create the finest tea blend and become the most successful tea merchant.
ALSO NOTE: Board Game Arena has some great games too – create a premium account to invite friends to private games.
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Start A Book Club
An oldie, but a goodie. Pick a book (or a documentary, film or podcast), give everyone a week or so to get through it, then video call each other to share your thoughts. Maybe even set a mandatory costume theme and see what everyone manages to conjure up from their wardrobe.
Wondering how to get hold of books? Here are the independent bookshops that can deliver to your house.
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Sing Karaoke Together
The Smule app allows you to sing with your friends, remotely, to an enormous catalogue of songs. They add new songs daily, and there’s an insane number of features – you can duet to recordings by Jason Derulo, record your rendition and make a music video to match, autotune your voice… or just hop on a livejam, which allows you and your friends to enjoy a good old-fashioned singalong wherever you are. Download here: Apple | Android
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Create A Shared Online Cookbook
Kevin McCutcheon
Found a creative way to combine a two-year old packet of couscous, a stock cube and some frozen peas? Share your quarantine recipes with your friends by creating an online cookbook that you can all contribute to. This website allows you to upload your own as well as browse their recipe library, and you can organise recipes by mealtimes or difficulty. Plus, you can order a hard copy, so you’ll have your own collective recipe book to keep at the end of all this.
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Do A Pub Quiz
Well, you can’t go to the pub. But you can all get some beers and ciders delivered, and do a remote quiz together. This website allows you to put together your own questions and invite up to 100 people to play the quiz simultaneously, with live leaderboard updates as you go.
Main image: Christopher Paul High
Quiet night in? Spend it with Shakespeare with these live play recordings from The Globe