Online Board Games to Play During Quarantine

It is "Day Who The Fuck Knows Anymore" of quarantine. If you're located in Los Angeles, such as I, then you've been on the Stay-at-Home order since mid-March. Give or take a few banana bread recipes. But let's be honest, as much as we all love banana bread, there's only so much we can eat before we wonder what else we could be doing to cope. For some it could be impulsively cutting wispy bangs (terribly) or stress baking all the time. But as humans, we need human interaction and connection. There's only so much quality time you can have with your family before you rethink the choice of spending quarantine back home.

There are still ways to have fun with your friends even during this time. What's a better way to bond than competitively annihilating your loved ones with friendly board games online?

---

1. House Party

I actually have to thank my sister for introducing me to House Party before it became everyone's favourite hangout. It's a social networking service that allows group video chat with up to eight people. In addition to that, it allows you to play games like Trivia, Heads Up!, Quick Draw, and Chips & Guac.

2. Coup

If you haven't played Coup, you are missing out. It takes place in a dystopian universe where you have an opportunity to seize control from the government. But in order to do so, you have "to destroy the influence of your rivals, and send them into exile."

The game consists of four influencer cards which provide you with a role: ambassador, which has the ability to switch their cards for ones in the middle of the table; duke, which allows the person to collect taxes; captain, which gives the person holding the card to steal from another player; assassin, which you know can assassinate; and contessa, which can block an assassin.

This online game was actually developed by a fan, and is not produced by the actual company. When you enter the site, it's pretty easy to follow along with the rules since there's a cheat sheet on the side of what each role's abilities are.

3. NetGames.io

This website actually has several games that you can play which I will refrain from explaining each one because I don't really care enough to. Also, because I haven't played Love Letters or Spyfall before. One Night Ultimate Werewolf is like Mafia but kind of like on steroids because of the abundance of roles.

4. PlayingCards.io

This website is like the one above because it's also composed of several games. It has Checkers, Crazy Eights, Go Fish, Hearts, Joking Hazard, and more. I would definitely give this one a check.

5. Crazy Eights

If you have an iPhone then you'll be familiar with this game through Game Pigeon within your messages app. The objective of the game is to be the first one to get rid of all of the cards in your hand. It's similar to Uno where you match the cards to the same color or number. There are also wild cards like reverse, skip the next person's turn, as well as +2 or +4 cards, and the 8 allows you to change the color of the middle pile.

6. Rummikub

I honestly just found out about this game through my friend's girlfriend on my recent trip to London. She said that the game was invented by a fellow Romanian, such as herself, and she taught me how to play. It's pretty similar to the Filipino card game Tongits.

The objective of the game is to be the first player to place all of their tiles on the table. This can be achieved by setting down sets of groups or runs. Groups are at least 3 tiles with the same number but different colors. Runs are tiles of the same color in consecutive order. However, the first set(s) you place should have a total sum value of at least 30 points. If you can't put anything down, you have to take a random tile from the pool. The fun part about this is you can manipulate the tiles on the table.

I found the app version of this game and I have been addicted ever since.

7. Poker Face

It's Texas Hold 'Em and Facetime mashed together. You're welcome.