Play social games with friends over Zoom | Hacker News Reader

Play social games with friends over Zoom

netgames.io

160 pointszuhayeer66 comments

Just to add another suggestion, Tabletop Simulator on Steam is pretty great and on sale now [1]. My friends and I used it to play our first online game of Catan on Saturday night, we used Discord for voice chat. We all have the boxed version but obviously we can't get together...

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/286160/Tabletop_Simulator...

How does that compare to playing Catan via Catan Universe? I enjoy the multi-platform (Mac, PC, iOS, Android, Browser, Steam) aspect of it, but it does have some rough edges.

One of my friends tried Catan Universe yesterday and says he prefers Tabletop Simulator. He also said that Catan Universe limits the number of players in the game; we had 5 players over the weekend and may have another friend join soon.

Colonist.io

Some of my younger family wanted to play Monopoly: as only a couple were remote (only one in the end) we decided to host it locally on a board, and have people join by webcam (https://meet.jit.si/).

Worked quite well.

I asked a related question about playing boardgames via webcam here https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/50797/what-ho... and have a self-answer about our experience.

They're planning on Risk next, but I fancy Catan with multiple boards (not sure how to work it; we only have the base game).

We'd considered Table-Top Simulator, but webcam gave us more human interaction which seemed more important for the kids (they chose the real board over the virtual one). They already have lots of video gaming time which might have influenced the decision.

(FWIW there's an unofficial mod for Monopoly on T-TSim.)

My buddies and I play Risk on http://landgrab.net and it's very nice, tons of different boards to choose from. We do 24 hour turns so it's different than playing live, it's more like correspondence chess.

colonist.io

This is a really cool idea! My friends and I play games and watch movies through Zoom. We just screenshare one person's screen, and it usually works out.

I'm not sure if there's a way to create a platform to play any game through Zoom, but if you have a Google Form with game requests, I'm sure you can very quickly scale up your offerings with confidence.

Are there any games that you've found work particularly well this way?

We played https://skribbl.io which was really fun!

All of the jackbox games should work. My friends and I played Drawful 2 (which is free right now [0]) over Zoom and it worked great.

[0] https://www.jackboxgames.com/

Check out this online implementation of Codenames I made with a friend:

http://gamecraft.live/

There are plenty of sites and tools for watching for watching together

Netflix Party (browser extension): Syncs netflix

SyncLounge (webapp): Syncs plex

twoseven.xyz: Create a room and play Youtube, Netflix, Prime Videos, Hulu, or really any <video> on any website with the extension

Tuturu.tv / Caracal.club: Gives you a VM in the cloud where you can play any video and watch together. Good when you have only a single netflix/hbo account or whatever. You're guaranteed to have a single view and can share control.

SyncPlay: An plugin for VLC/MPC that syncs local files

There are many more, andchill.tv for Youtube, Kast, and so on. Zoom is probably the last solution i'd use for this.

There's a similar (and similarly-named) syncing plugin for Disney Plus:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disney-plus-party/...

I can understand wanting to avoid bad press given the current state of things, but even still I'm shocked that Netflix and especially Disney haven't hit these with C&Ds for trademark use given the obvious potential for confusion.

Netflix Party at least has existed for years. I used it at least 4 years ago if not longer. What surprises me is that none of these sites have made a built-in version of this feature.

Well, and that's exactly the source of the confusion. I was sent a "Netflix Party" link recently and sure enough, it was a regular Netflix.com URL that loaded and played the movie we were planning to watch. I had no idea until I was told that I needed to switch to Chrome and install a browser extension before it would actually do the synchronized play.

If it was "Watch Together" or something, it would immediately clue me in that there was something else I was going to need to install or sign up for in order to make it work.

Regarding discoverability, can't Chrome extensions register themselves to handle custom schemas? If Netflix Party gave you a party://netflix/movie-id/session-id URL, then it would fail to resolve on a machine without the plugin installed, while still not requiring any centralized infrastructure.

https://parsecgaming.com/ is made to play local-multiplayer games remotely. It is like screensharing, but it forwards controller inputs as well at super low latency.

There are many great online free games. I'd like to see someone compile a big list of all of the great free games you can play right in your browser:

Codenames: https://www.horsepaste.com/

Secret Hitler: http://secrethitler.io/

Plenty of other board games in the browser:

https://tabletopia.com

https://boardgamearena.com/

There are also lots of io games, I've been playing a lot of curvytron.com

There's also a pile of Jackbox games, where only the host needs to buy the game and participant can play from their phone using jackbox.tv and the code.

Seems like on desktop the links on the homepage are broken but they work from the hamburger menu. Interestingly, the homepage links work on mobile.

What browser and OS are you using? The links are working in all the desktop browsers I have a hold of.

Ah, must've been the lack of a trailing slash in the OP's link. Fixed now :)

I've really enjoyed Kosmi[1] for some socializing recently.

[1] https://kosmi.io/

I want to do this, but instead of it being games, more like listening circles oriented around human needs, envisioning the future, getting empathy and support, etc. as a means of some sort of eventual consensus building. i also have limited time to develop this because I'm a full-time parent. Anyone able to help or point me in a direction to keep the idea moving?

Start local, I have been reaching out to some people I admire / great thinkers for zoom discussions. Everyone is home and probably looking for something fun to do.

I have been encouraging non C19 discussions, as we are inundated with updates and news articles non stop.

We've been doing this locally. I haven't been hearing about it happening in my hometown, which is why i want a platform specifically promoting it.

At a previous job, I used a tool that really gave a sense of presence that Zoom/Discord/Skype, etc, do not. I wish they had the right sort of payment model for it, but I'd look at Sococo (https://www.sococo.com/). I think something like this would be key to feeling like you are talking to humans and not, well, playing a computer game.

I've been looking for alternatives. There's one called Remo (https://remo.co/) that's similar, but seems to have a large group and tables for four people at the same time, so I don't think it'll fit your needs.

This one (https://github.com/capnmidnight/lozya) just showed up here on HN the other day, and is a new project to add a sense of presence on top of Jitsi.

There are also, apparently, Avatar Chat worlds, in 2D and 3D, and they might be worth trying, but it does look like it could really be distracting as it appears more game oriented than socialization oriented.

My wife & daughter have been playing various board games via Duo with my in-laws. They went with this approach to add a level of "hands-on" to the gameplay. They have to limit their options to games both parties have, but that leaves literally dozens of options.

The nice thing is that any video-enabled platform will work for this.

Brilliant! I've been looking for something like this. Did you build it OP, or find it somewhere?

Somewhat related, I built a simple Boggle-like word game to play with my family over screen share: https://wordgame.paulbutler.org/

Didn't build it - used it to play Werewolf with some friends yesterday

Pretty neat word game! Will have to try

AirConsole has this feature now too https://www.airconsole.com/join

You have werewolf! That's a really fun game.

Unfortunately- if I click on any of these links, I get the following message- Cannot GET /onu-werewolf/

Apologies, posted a bad link. Try https://netgames.io/games/

Consider Jitsi

https://jitsi.org/

Why is there no preview of what we're signing up for? I literally have to get 4 people to join just to see what we're dealing with.

I recognize all of the games, I have played their IRL/tabletop versions but I would also like to see a video or a demo of how this works as well

Also have we hugged it to death because Codenames is 404-ing? https://netgames.io/codenames/

edit: ok when I registered my name I stopped getting the 404, not sure if that was intentional or just timing

No, the frontpage links are broken, it's supposed to be https://netgames.io/games/codenames/

Hangouts Video Chat removed the feature at some point, but it used to have games you could play in video calls. Two in particular my college buddies and I thoroughly enjoyed playing - Warlight (a rebranded Risk) and Poker.

I was actually thinking the other day it'd be great if any of the chat apps had that now that the whole world is connecting via video chat

I get a 404 whenever I try to click on a game

Click the hamburger menu icon

We played this the other week https://skribbl.io/ and had a zoom call alongside.

It's online pictionary and seemed to work very well, although admittedly the scoring does depend on people's typing speed

So I gotta ask, is this legal? I recognize a few of these are paid boardgames.

I am not sure about all of them but I know Secret Hitler has a license for non-commercial use listed on their website. https://www.secrethitler.com/

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

We played racing karts on https://www.airconsole.com/ the other day with friends. We used WhatsApp for voice.

Would this be easy enough to setup for a class of 11-year-olds who'd all be in their own homes?

Each kid would need access to a computer (the screen) + a smartphone (the remote control.)

If you're more into wargaming, VASSAL has been around forever, each game module gives you virtual versions of maps, counters, charts, dice, etc so you can play whatever games you own (or many have rules and everything you need to play anyway).

It acts like a virtual tabletop for hundreds of games.

I recently had a good type playing a Pictionary-type game with friends here: https://www.drawasaurus.org/ You can also join a room with people you don't know and play a quick game.

I created a working app recently for Classic Mafia (Werewolf is a variant of that) card shuffle - for whoever is interested - https://mafia.brolia.com

If anyone wants to play taboo online: https://abidlabs.github.io/infinite-taboo/

On this subject, does anyone have any suggestions for games that would work for a small group of 5-6 year olds?

Guess Who and Battleships would obviously work well for one-on one, but something for three or four would be good.

To add to the list: We've had a lot of fun playing https://www.geoguessr.com/, both cooperatively and competitively.

Very different from the type they have, but you can also play pictionary with the whiteboard feature.

Anybody have examples of games you can play with in combination with Zoom and a Google Presentation?

Wouldn't use that for a meeting of cats. www.jitsi.org

Cannot GET /onu-werewolf/

cool...

There's a slash missing from the end of the URL, so the links to games aren't working (for me anyway). If you start here, they will work:

https://netgames.io/games/

Ah yeah just noticed, thanks! Unfortunately, can’t update link on post

deploy a redirect server side.. i couldnt get it to work until i read this comment - you're losing tons of traffic

This should be something that you can fix within your app though. :~)

Wish I could, not my app!

Added above. Thanks!

Or avoid using Zoom until they've fixed their issues, and have at least some semblance of acting responsibly?

Oh god, what if Chinese agents see my games? The horror!

Correct. If you are playing battleship they will know you have your destroyer parked at E2.

Game over.

It's quite obvious to me that they were advocating against promoting Zoom by using it in any manner. That is, playing tabletop games or otherwise.

I had a similar reaction when I read this thread's title: "I can't believe the frontpage was flooded with articles about Zoom being controversial privacy-wise a couple of days ago and now this pops up".

ok, fine, too serious. no worries.

Yeah, it is odd that Zoom is even used in the title of the submission at all. Given the current zoom media storm, it is obvious clickbait since the actual linked site does not mention Zoom anywhere. A better title might be "Play Social Games Like Werewolf and Secret Hitler Remotely"

I'd say Jackbox.tv would be a good name drop instead of Zoom since they've popularized the "code sharing Gameroom website" technology.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com