Games to play on a video call with friends who live far away
Games that work on a Zoom, FaceTime or Discord call with friends in other cities, how to set them up in a minute, and the ones to skip.
When your friends live in four different cities, a video call is basically the group chat with faces. It’s lovely for twenty minutes. Then the catching up runs out, someone’s connection freezes mid-sentence, and people start glancing at their other screen.
Games fix this better than anything. You get something to do together, and the conversation fills itself in between rounds.
What makes a good video call game
Not every party game survives a call. The ones that work have three things going for them:
- Everyone plays on their own screen. Games where one person screen-shares a board get awkward fast: one person clicks, everyone else shouts instructions, and the share lags.
- Everyone answers at the same time. Talking over each other is worse on a call. Answering on your phone at once avoids it.
- The reveal is the fun part. You want the moment where all the answers appear together and the whole call reacts at once.
The setup
Keep the call on your laptop or TV for the faces and voices. Play on your phone. One person opens a room on play.guezzer.com and drops the link in the chat, everyone taps it, and they’re in. No accounts, no downloads, and it doesn’t matter who’s on an iPhone, an Android or a laptop.
It works alongside Zoom, Google Meet, FaceTime, Discord, WhatsApp, whatever your group already uses.
Where we’d start
Faker. Honestly the best one for a call. Everyone sees the secret word on their own phone, except the faker. Clues go round, then you vote. Watching everyone’s face on camera while they give their clue adds a whole layer. You’re not just listening, you’re looking for the twitch.
Doodle Gallery. Everyone draws the same prompt on their phone. Then the anonymous gallery opens and the whole call loses it at the same moment. Probably the most laughs per minute you’ll get out of a call.
How Well Do You Know Me?. Lovely for friends who used to see each other every day and now don’t. You find out what’s changed. One person answers about themselves and the rest guess.
Song Battles. A knockout music tournament. In each match two players pick a song for a theme, and everyone else votes without knowing whose is whose. At the end you get a recap of every song from the night, which is a decent playlist in itself.
For a longer call
Planning a proper evening? Try Vanished, a detective game where you question each other to work out who took a treasure, where and how. It’s for 3 to 6 players and suits a call well, since it’s all questions and answers. Truth Be Told is the cooperative option: each of you saw a different part of the same event, and you rebuild it together on a shared timeline.
Blind Card works well remotely too. You see everyone’s card except your own, so you have to find out yours from what others whisper to you. Whispers are private messages inside the game: everyone sees who whispered to whom, never what was said. Which is exactly where the suspicion starts.
Games that need no app at all
- Twenty questions. One person thinks of something; everyone else gets twenty yes-or-no questions.
- Scavenger hunt. Everyone gets sixty seconds to find something at home: something older than them, something blue, the strangest mug they own. Show it on camera.
- Would you rather. Free, endless, and it always starts an argument.
Small things that help
- Agree on a time. “Sometime Saturday” never happens. “Saturday 8pm UK time” does.
- If one friend has a bad connection, let them play on their phone and join the call on audio only.
- Start with something short. If the first game drags, the call ends early.
- Leave time after the last game. Half the fun is the chat it sets off.
