Free family game night, virtual or otherwise

Most of these work brilliant online or in the same room with each person on a device.

https://drawphone.tannerkrewson.com/ or https://garticphone.com/ A full drawing game supports lots of players. Based on the board Game Telestrations / Scrawl.  Drawing meets ‘’telephone’ you alternate between drawing and guessing what a drawing is as a simple drawing usually devolves into mild hilarious chaos. I recommend one person shares the final books so everyone can laugh and share together.
Free browser based. No player limit

https://skribbl.io/ 
Hangman with drawing. One person draws the other try and guess, you can see other peoples guesses and the words I the hangman grid get completed as time passes, the quicker you are the more points you earn.
Free browser based 12 player

https://codenames.game/
Team word game. The captains give one work clues to lead their team to guess their words, hopefully avoiding the enemies and the assassin. Simple yet deep. Originally a card game the official implementation is brilliant. You can vote on your favourite answers by clicking once or clicking any where on the card but the yellow thumb. The thumb and double clicking picks that card.
Free browser based, no limited but best with no more than 10

Boardgamearena.com
Platform containing 100s of board and card games, rules are enforced to make learning easier. Some titles require a paid for premium subscription
Free Browser based, Player count depends on games.

https://netgames.io/games/
A variety of social games including Resistance, One night werewolf etc designed to be played online or in person on a mobile phone. These are unlicensed but very well implement.
Free Broswer based also works well on phone, Player count depends on games.

All of the above can be played just in a browser but for the best experience get on a voice channel and chat and banter.
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This guide below was originally written when Drawful was free so some of it may not make sense but the process is still sound to play the excellent jackbox games.. https://www.jackboxgames.com/how-to-play/

How to run a free family game nights virtual or otherwise. This will work over the internet, in the same room or even if one person wants or needs to be in a different part of the house or a combination of all

Jackbox

Each player needs a device phone, laptops or PC. A shared screen everyone can see, gather round a big TV or stream over a free service like Discord (or both have some people at home and some online. ) Total cost Zero (hopefully)

  1) Download / Open Steam (Free) Start a Jackbox game (Jackbox games are paid for (not free) available and they work across a huge range of platforms including Firestick and Switch)

2) Start The Game, you will see a four digit room code.
3) Share your screen, either everyone looks at the TV or you can use a free chat service like discord where you go live or Skype, zoom.
4) Everyone navigates to jackbox.tv on a browser on their device and enters the four digit code.
5) Set ground rules, Is this family friend or are drawings of willies allowed and if any topics are too sensitive. No Ducks 

6) Play and have fun. Now you have a system set up investigate other Jackbox games or games you can run by sharing your screen or using a web camera.

A more detailed guide is here https://herefordshireboardgamers.co.uk/online-gaming/ Please follow and like us:

A more detailed guide is here https://herefordshireboardgamers.co.uk/online-gaming/ Please follow and like us: